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The 911 Dispatcher: Successful Mediation of Caller Demands and Effective Policin ...
RESEARCH
The 911 Dispatcher: Successful Mediation of Caller Demands and Effective Policing
911, What is the location of your emergency?” According to the National 911 Annual Report (2022), there were 12,505,076 calls to 911 in the state of Georgia in 2021. These calls for service ranged from minor questions to heinous crimes. Answering these calls are E-911 dispatchers. Never knowing what emergency lies on the other end of the line, the E-911 dispatcher must be versed in life-saving medical procedures, fire protocol, natural disaster instructions, policing, and law knowledge, as well as any other emergency. Since the announcement in 1999 by the Federal Communication Commission that “911” would be the universal number for anyone to call with any type of emergency (Federal Communication Commission, 2023), the approximately 212 911 centers in the state of Georgia have been functioning 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. The purpose of this quantitative study was to measure how current 911 dispatchers view training requirements, community/social support, job-specific stressors, and the physical and mental health of dispatchers. An online survey was conducted with a link provided through social media. Questions were derived using the Kirkpatrick model, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, Coping with Stress Inventory-Short Form, Patient Health Questionnaire-15, and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist: Civilian Scale. Each measure was scored separately. Coping mechanisms and training had an inverse relationship with post-traumatic stress disorder symptomology, while age and years worked had a positive correlation with post-traumatic stress disorder symptomology. The majority of the 100 randomly selected participants pointed out that the dispatch center itself needed immediate attention. Dispatchers who perform poorly would hinder the successful mitigation of caller demands. Without successful mediation of caller demands by the E-911 dispatcher, effective policing cannot occur.

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