The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - 2020 Summary Findings from a Study on the Health of our Emergency Responders | Foundations Friday 77

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

Sharing the summary and focus areas to help improve the overall health of our Emergency Responders. The summary is from a 2020 CrewCare report by ImageTrend. It includes feedback from over 4,100 Emergency Responders.Key takeaways:Responders need each other's and their leadership's supportObesity is a problem in the Emergency Responder communityLack of employer resources was still a problem in 2020Emergency Responders need to improve their sleep to improve their healthExercise is a better stress-coping mechanism than alcoholRead the full study at https://www1.imagetrend.com/july-2020-health-of-our-emergency-responders-crewcare-report/Have the plan to keep teams on trackStay informed with facts, not fearGet involved to make a differenceGodspeed

Today's episode of KevTalks is sponsored by, well, you, the listener. Thank you for clicking play and for tuning into the show. KevTalks is the show that provides compelling interviews and value-added perspectives on topics primarily in the healthcare, wellness, technology, and public safety spaces. So enjoy your commute. Do we still do that? Coffee or morning walk, and let's fly into the KevTalks podcast in three, two, one. Hey everybody, welcome to Foundations Friday 77.

This is going to be a follow-up for my discussion with Rhonda Kelly from the All Clear Foundation where we were working to empower emergency responders with being more resilient and succeeding and thriving and mattering. And what I'm going to share is if you go to the allclearfoundation.org website, there are awesome resources there. And what I found is a study from July 2020. It's the Health of Our Emergency Responders, a crew care report. So it's authored by Image Trends Clinical and Research Services team. And really what I'm going to share are the summaries from it. There's a lot of great data in there, not super surprising with some of the burnout and physical exercises, a better coping mechanism, mechanism than alcohol.

Folks are really stressed out when they're on the job. So and some other things that aren't quite so obvious and really helpful there. So what I'm going to do now is go through my don't keep screwing up my mouse here. Going through really the the summary, right, the final thoughts. This is a short episode, so hopefully this is helpful. Here we go. The report summary. So one, high levels of coworker support are associated with being less likely to have PTSD and more likely to have low levels of stress. So this goes along with like what I read in Johan Hari's book, Lost Connections, right? That sense of community, particularly with your own community, with your brothers and sisters in law enforcement or fire, EMS, dispatch, healthcare, all those

emergency responder areas is that camaraderie, that teamwork, that brother and sisterhood, that connection. Foster that. Don't isolate yourself. Reach out if you need help. It's very important. The second part of the summary says that obesity is high within the crew care population. This was a little over 4,000 people that they interviewed first responders, which is 50% really, and is associated with depression type feeling. So when you're not in shape, when you don't feel healthy, when you feel bad in your clothes and your belly's sticking against your shirt and you're tired or out of breath because you're not working out like you should be, it's depressing, right?

It doesn't help you process emotions. I've been there, right, where I've gotten lazy before and then got into this habit years ago, which is great. Probably, what, five, six years ago. Again, I was in a habit before. But you can tell when you get out of regular exercise, not just work, but on purpose exercise each day, your mind is better. It's stronger.

It's more resilient. And it makes a huge difference. The third thing in the summary talks about lack of employer or agency provided services, such as mental or physical wellness resources or associated with PTSD, burnout and obesity, or a desire for weight loss. So some employers don't have great resources. So think about the All Clear Foundation, allclearfoundation.org. Go to the Kept Talks podcast.

I have a lot of resources there and have done past stories on things that I know will help. They helped me, whether it's get more sleep or working on meditation, mindfulness, exercise tips, those kind of things. Lack of sleep. So that's this fourth thing, right? Is associated with lower self-perceived physical health. Sleeping disorders are associated with lower self-perceived mental wellness and low stress levels are associated with better sleep quality. So if we're exercising, if we're losing a bit of that belly or other area of fat, if we get better support, maybe from outside our employer

or talk to our employer and say, hey, we need something better to help us out with mental health and physical health, then we'll get better sleep, right? I did that episode about got sleep, I talked to Dr. Tracy marks about good ways to get sleep. Ron and I talked about that. Sleep is critical and sleep gets totally jacked up with shift work and that fight or flight response that's hard to turn off sometimes. So listen to that got sleep episode on KevTalksPod. Just search for sleep and it'll come up there. And I really have some good tips. Really getting in a regular routine makes a big difference. The last thing to have just as final thoughts here before we do some focus areas for change is that utilizing exercise to cope with stress shows a positive correlation with low stress levels, while using alcohol to cope with stress shows a negative

correlation. So I think we know that, right? It feels good at the moment to have some drinks with our buddies or our family or whatever. And then it doesn't, right? And then it doesn't help anymore. And then it makes it worse. Exercise doesn't make it go away. But in the moment where you're doing burpees, and you're just trying not to throw up, that feels pretty good when you're done, and you've pushed hard, or you're doing squats, or you're walking or whatever your chosen exercise is something that's functional and helps your job or just helps your overall health, that's a huge deal. And it's much more beneficial than any sort of substance that masks symptoms or just numbs us out. Three things that they have on page 36 of the study,

the image trend study of the health of emergency responders from crew care are these three areas for change. Is foster coworker and supervisor support. So we kind of touched on that with the first one. But if you're a leader out there, you've got to support your people. You've got to listen, right? You've got to learn those signs. And there's excellent tools on the allclearfoundation.org website on how to see burnout, how to see signs of PTSD, how to see signs of suicidality, maybe, suicidation, those kind of things. But we have to

support each other, both from a leadership perspective and boots on the ground together perspective. We have to find ways to encourage healthy sleeping habits and resources to manage sleeping disorders. And like I mentioned, the episode I talk about of Got Sleep on my podcast, I talk about that cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. And you don't have to do kind of the whole therapeutic thing and all that. If you just tighten up and you get up at the same time each day and you have a good morning routine and exercise and you stay hydrated, and then the evening, one to two hours before you go to bed, you're off your devices, you're trying not to watch a super exciting, violent kind of stuff, which I've been on a binge of watching the last kingdom lately. So I'm kind of guilty of that. But

if you can do that, I take magnesium glycinate in the evening. It helps me kind of feel chilled out, relaxes your muscles. And magnesium is really good for you. And then also have read a book, right? Read a book one to two hours before bedtime and it helps your mind calm down, turn the lights down, don't be super bright at night. There's a whole way that we can and steps that we can take to make our sleep better. Not having a problem keeping it cool today. It's like eight degrees where I am. The third thing you have is provide adequate mental and physical health resources. So Rhonda and I touched on this. It's gotten better over the years. And my buddy Hank and I think talked about this too on the substance abuse and public safety episode. It's gotten better over the years where public safety, healthcare have realized our people are

hurting. Their minds are hurting. Their souls are hurting. We need to get them better resources. There's things I've heard of called like the pause after you lose a patient where you pause and you reflect on it because you got to absorb it. And then talking to each other, talking on the, you know, the back end of the rig and the front of the SUV, wherever it is, um, you know, and having a, sharing a good meal with your friends or getting legit professional help when you need to, when you feel burnout, when you feel like all is lost, it's not, it's hard to be an emergency responder. It's hard to live with the

guilt of losing someone, the survivor's guilt. You can't save everyone though. So please consider checking this study out. I'll link to it on the website. You do have to say like give your email to get the actual PDF, but it was an automatic thing. It was free. Thank you so much for listening. I hope all the emergency responders out there are doing well. Thank you for being on shift over this Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, whatever you celebrate season. While we are safely in our homes, it is much appreciated. We appreciate all of you out there. I appreciate all of you that are listening to this podcast. I just added a support the show link on KevTalksPod.com.

So if you've got a buck or so and you feel like supporting this message, we're going to have some great guests coming up in the following months in the technology space. We're going to get some history on the Civil War and leadership lessons and more. And every little bit that you support the show helps me get better gear and better hosting and all that good stuff.

So thanks so much for being here with me. Remember to have a plan, stay informed, get involved. And I wish you all Godspeed.