Recommended training guidelines for 911 dispatchers in the works

WEAKLEY COUNTY, Tenn. — Only 18 states in nation currently have a set of standards of required training for 911 dispatchers, but now one local agency is working to help raise that standard for emergency operations nationwide.

“You have to be licensed to be a dog groomer. You have to be licensed to be an EMT or a paramedic. You don’t have to have anything to be a 911 dispatcher,” Weakley County EMA Director Jamison Peevyhouse said.

A group of 911 organizations jointly announced Monday that it has been participating in an effort to develop recommended minimum training guidelines for the nation’s 911 call-takers and dispatchers.

“We developed the guideline so that no matter where you are at you have a great cross section of areas for expertise,” Peevyhouse said.

Christy Fulcher has been a dispatcher for 15 years and said her training when she first started was minimal.

“Considering that we deal with life and death every day and what we do affects the outcome, then I think that there is a need, that we need to have a special mandate for so much training before you can actually get out here and do the job,” she said.

Peevyhouse said that more than 6,000 911 centers across the states take more than 240 million emergency calls a year, and in many of those states dispatcher have little to no required training.

“Some places you can go to work and not have any training whatsoever and answer a 911 call on the fist shift without any training,” he said.

Fulcher said she believes this training will not only help dispatchers but the people on the other line as well.

“They’re going to get a lot better service out of it because they’ve got more qualified people who are answering the phone, and we can go back on that training and say this is everything that we have done to better serve you and the community,” she said.

The manual released Monday is available to 911 centers across the nation to help modify for the next 45 days. After the training is finalized, it will be presented to different state legislatures to be implemented across their states.

Tennessee is one of 18 states already requiring 911 dispatchers to have a basic level of training.