Naperville FD Tracks Exposures, Critical Incidents, and Kudos to Provide Wellness and Recognize Performance of Their 200+ Members

THE CHALLENGE 

Naperville Fire Department (a suburb of Chicago, IL) has 201 career members across 10 stations and logs about 17,000 annual calls. As a progressive department that wanted a better way to track combustion exposures to protect the rights and health of their firefighters, they spoke to their local police department to learn if the tool they were using to track conduct and critical incidents might also meet their needs.

Ms. Cali Reavy, who has worked at Naperville Fire Department since 2017 as an Administrative Assistant, said “If one of our firefighters is diagnosed with cancer, we needed a way to know what incidents they had been exposed to that involved potential cancerous toxins. This is very important to help them and their family receive just compensation and support they deserve for line-of-duty illnesses.”

Ms. Reavy also described the need for a better method of PPE reporting than the tedious and time consuming paper-based process they had been using. “I just worked on a FOIA request that involved 30 years of records and 10,000 pages of documents that had to be pulled out of our old fire records system,” said Ms. Reavy. “It took three of us a full week to get the papers, remove paper clips, scan the documents to digitize them, and then provide to the requestor on a flash drive.”

THE CHOICE

Naperville Fire Department implemented Guardian Tracking in 2011 to initially track all their combustion exposures, but they have also been using the solution to track their COVID exposures, to document and recognize high employee performance, for peer-to-peer recognition, and for critical incidents.

“When the COVID outbreak happened, we used Guardian Tracking to log every time a member transported or was around an infected patient in case it turned into a worker’s comp issue,” said Ms. Reavy.

Naperville Fire Department has set up groups in Guardian Tracking by rank (i.e. Captains, Lieutenants, Chief) and shift groups so that when a threshold or specific event takes place, the right supervisor, team, and/or command staff are immediately notified. “When a critical incident or defined traumatic event takes place, our significant incident team gets involved to counsel or provide some one-on-one training for the member,” explained Ms. Reavy. “If a certain threshold or level is triggered, then the Chief is notified.” Departments are able to define the event significance and how to route communication, with privacy settings as needed to protect member privacy and comply with union rules.

Users are also able to document conduct that deserves recognition and since all 201 members have a login, they can see the recognition they are receiving, which helps provide a motivating workplace.

THE CHANGE

By moving off paper-based systems and making it easy for members to document exposures, critical incidents, and kudos, Naperville Fire Department is not only saving valuable time, but also improving the accuracy and access to their documentation.

“Guardian Tracking is making it easier for supervisors to quickly access tangible information that they need for performance reviews,” said Ms. Reavy.

Proactive and progressive fire departments like Naperville Fire Department are using Guardian Tracking to ensure they care for the physical and mental wellness of their firefighters. They also leverage Vector’s LMS (TargetSolutions) training management system and Check It truck check and asset management tools to ensure their team is trained and their equipment is ready when the alarm rings.