The Center for Firefighter Injury Research and Safety Trends (FIRST) at the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health is bringing the Fire service Organizational Culture of Safety (FOCUS) survey to the United States fire and rescue service.

FOCUS is a free, FEMA-funded tool built specifically for the fire and rescue service predict injuries, burnout, job satisfaction, work engagement, and behavioral health outcomes.

To date, over 700 fire departments (70,000 firefighters!) across the country have assessed their safety culture using FOCUS. However, as FOCUS became a first-come, first-serve opportunity, less and less volunteer and combination departments participated over time.

Why does this matter? FIRST Center analysis revealed that combination and volunteer departments had higher management commitment to safety scores than their career counterparts. We need more combination and volunteer departments to participate in FOCUS so we can better understand this phenomenon.

While the Combination and Volunteer Assessment of Safety (CANVAS) program emphasizes survey recruitment of combination and volunteer departments, career departments are still encouraged to enroll.

When you participate in FOCUS, you receive the following at no cost to you:

• A final report of your results at the department and station levels.
• The opportunity to attend an Online FOCUS Culture Camp where you will perform a teach back of your data while building additional competencies to advocate for the needs your data support.
• Access to a virtual community of other departments who have taken the FOCUS survey and attended Online Culture Camps.

Here’s what fire departments are saying about their FOCUS data:

“We have all heard ‘perception is reality’. This is the first time I have ever heard of a data driven mechanism that proves perceptions are reality. Being able to correlate personal impressions and feelings to the culture (safety), will be a great tool moving forward.”

“This data validated much of what I already believed and couldn’t prove, suspected but had no way to verify, or plainly educated me on what I need to know to grow a culture of safety in my organization. I can’t wait to share this, get the next survey complete, and identify our current FOCUS score so we can start moving.”