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CARTHAGE, Mo. – Kima Burnett has been a dispatcher with Jasper County Emergency Services for 22 years.
In that time she’s taken more stressful calls than she can count.
Kima Burnett, Trainer, Jasper County Emergency Services: “Calls involving children are hard. Taking a call from someone I knew reporting a suicide.. that was very hard. Taking a call from someone that went back into a burning building and I was on the line with her for her last breaths.. not realizing until after the fact when a responder let me know that happened. Lots of hard calls over the years.”
Burnett says a big part of what makes the job hard is not knowing what happens after they hang up the phone.
In fact, research posted in the Journal of Traumatic Stress in 2012 shows more than 30 percent of dispatchers experience high levels of stress after major calls, and links some of it to a lack of closure.
Burnett: “So a lot of it on our part is speculation, trying to play the what if game in our head and try to figure out what could have transpired. And over a period of time, that not knowing can really take a toll.”
Supervisors with the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office have started new efforts to change that.
