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Fit to fight? Evidence for a minimum occupational fitness standard for UK fire and rescue service personnel In February’s edition of Emergency Services Times, Justin Johnston, Chair of CFOA’s FireFit Steering Group and Deputy Chief Fire Officer, Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, explored a range of personal thoughts and issues on the highly topical matter of firefighter fitness. Justin also highlighted the forthcoming research from CFOA’s FireFit Steering Group and the University of Bath, which was commissioned to specifically look at the physical demands placed upon UK Firefighters. Although Bath University’s perspective on the project doesn’t provide us with the complete picture to which Justin alluded, it does represent a significant step forward in terms of our understanding of UK firefighter fitness. Words: Andy Siddall PhD and James Bilzon PhD, Department for Health, University of Bath. Justin Johnson’s article earlier this year highlighted issues related to the age and fitness of UK firefighters and advocated a more detailed, ‘highly nuanced’ understanding of the full spectrum of firefighter health and lifestyle issues, such as the impact of shift patterns, lifestyle habits, gender based issues and the cumulative effects of exposure to airborne pollutants to name a few.
An occupational physiology team, based in the Department for Health at the University of Bath, has been working in partnership with the FireFit Steering Group and the Chief Fire Officers’ Association (CFOA) over the last two years. The study, specific to UK firefighters, demonstrates that
a single minimum cardiorespiratory fitness (VO2 max) standard of 42.3mLkg-1min-1 would help ensure safe and effective operational performance in UK fire and rescue service personnel.
“This research represents a significant step forward in terms of our understanding of UK Firefighter fitness.” Physical demands analysis Over a two-week period in April 2013, 62 firefighters were put through their paces at the Fire Service College, Moreton-in-Marsh, during a study that became the largest of its kind ever completed in Europe. Participating operational firefighters performed a number of standardised tasks preendorsed to simulate the minimum physical demands expected of any operational firefighter.
The tasks were undertaken by male, female, retained and wholetime firefighters ranging from 21 to 63 years of age.
Emergency Services Times August 2014
The tasks, by definition, were required to be essential for every firefighter, use standard fire and rescue service equipment and have a high level of simplicity and control.
Instead of typical breathing apparatus, however, firefighters wore a facemask and monitoring device, pre-calibrated to assess their oxygen uptake. A study of this nature is known as a ‘physical demands analysis’; an investigation designed to quantify the physical demand a given task or activity places on the body. This represents the ‘gold standard’ method for assessing the physical demands of a job, and by definition, allows an occupational fitness standard to be objectively established. A real concern From an occupational physiologists perspective, fitness is a paradigm that primarily relates to safety. Possessing the physical capacity to cope with the demands of the job is equally as important as any other factor, including the availability of appropriate protective equipment, both for the safety of the employee, their colleagues and the public they serve. Unfortunately, lower levels of fitness are associated with higher levels of exertion, which may not only lead to failure to perform work safely, but also increase the risk of musculoskeletal injury and/or a serious cardiac event. Indeed, the majority of on-duty fatalities are related to cardiovascular disease and occur during, or immediately following, an emergency response. The risks associated with sudden physical exertion among unfit personnel, is a very real concern. It is all too easy to assume that a physically active occupation maintains physical readiness for the job. This is not necessarily the case with intermittently active occupations. With such a
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physically and mentally arduous occupation, often unpredictable in nature and duration, we cannot shy away from the obvious legal and moral obligation to objectively assess physical fitness and help protect our UK firefighters. Fitness standards and health profile It was some years before the Moreton trial that questions were posed by the FireFit Steering group (now a sub-group of CFOA) regarding: occupational fitness standards, based specifically on the demands of a UK firefighter; and an investigation into what the health profile of a firefighter looks like, instead of reviewing data from other international services as had been the case previously. Jointly funded by CFOA and the Fire Research and Training Trust, two adjacent projects began to tackle these two aims.
firefighter, use standard fire and rescue service equipment and have a high level of simplicity and control. Sixteen different UK fire and rescue services recruited male, female, retained and wholetime firefighters ranging from 21 to 63 years of age. Those participating were given surveys to assess the validity of the tasks they had performed, and tasks that received adequate validity were then used to derive the fitness standard.
Positives gleaned In addition to the work completed so far, some positives can be further gleaned for the service’s future. Our ongoing work using a UK fire and rescue service national health and lifestyle survey has indicated interesting associations between lifestyle habits and health and well-being in the workforce. Also, tasks used in the physical demands analysis, which are easily replicable on a drill ground, have a designated minimum pace and could, currently, function as key resources for training exercises for any firefighter on station. A technical report of our research, alongside a recommended guidance document released via CFOA, is aimed for completion this Summer. However, with further investigation the designed tasks could also be validated as physical readiness tests for the job itself, taking surrogate place of laboratory based exercise testing with actual fire fighting tasks. This, and further investigation of the health profile of fire and rescue service employees will provide a package of resources and advice to enhance the safety of the UK fire and rescue service as a whole. We believe the research completed thus far has made some important first steps towards a holistic understanding of what keeps firefighters safe and healthy during, and long after, a career in service. www.firefitsteeringgroup.co.uk www.bath.ac.uk/health/research/ sport-health-exercise-science
“With such a physically and mentally arduous occupation, often unpredictable in nature and duration, we cannot shy away from the obvious legal and moral obligation to objectively assess physical fitness and help protect our UK firefighters.� The background work to reach the demands analysis was extensive. A panel of organisation experts from around the UK, with 12-28 years of experience in the service, guided and endorsed the design, best practice and minimum acceptable pace for all tasks in a year long consultation process. The tasks, by definition, were required to be essential for every
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Emergency Services Times August 2014