Safety climate and firefighting: Focus group results

Abstract

Background: Firefighting is a hazardous occupation and there have been numerous calls for fundamental changes in how fire service organizations approach safety and balance safety with other operational priorities. These calls, however, have yielded little systematic research.

Methods: As part of a larger project to develop and test a model of safety climate for the fire service, focus groups were used to identify potentially important dimensions of safety climate pertinent to firefighting.

Results: Analyses revealed nine overarching themes. Competency/professionalism, physical/psychological readiness, and that positive traits sometimes produce negative consequences were themes at the individual level; cohesion and supervisor leadership/support at the workgroup level; and politics/bureaucracy, resources, leadership, and hiring/promotion at the organizational level. A multi-level perspective seems appropriate for examining safety climate in firefighting.

Conclusions: Safety climate in firefighting appears to be multi-dimensional and some dimensions prominent in the general safety climate literature also seem relevant to firefighting. These results also suggest that the fire service may be undergoing transitions encompassing mission, personnel, and its fundamental approach to safety and risk.

Practical applications: These results help point the way to the development of safety climate measures specific to firefighting and to interventions for improving safety performance.

Keywords: Firefighters; Injury prevention; Occupational safety; Qualitative research; Safety climate.