A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

Changing Careers -- Dispatching?

Posted: Feb 28, 2012

Recently there was a poster here celebrating her new position as a dispatcher for her state police. That particularly got my attention because she is making $36K per year plus benefits AND a former coworker of mine (MT) left to go to work for our sheriff's office doing the same thing.

I have been looking online for dispatcher jobs, and here are some of my thoughts:

Doing 911/EMS stuff is not my cuppa tea. WAY too stressful!

I would think that sheriff's office and/or state police and/or small town cops might be just a little less stressful than city police in a major city.

My local police department has the dispatchers divided up into two groups: The first accepts incoming calls from the public, and the second is on the radio dispatching the cops. I would rather do the 2nd than the 1st. Unfortunately, however, those in the 2nd group do work on the phone lines when they are slow.

This is definitely multitasking, doing many things simultaneously. There are 6 computer screens and 3 communications systems that must be monitored AND you are fielding a lot of info and making many decisions.

After so many years of transcribing, I'm not sure that I'm ready to do that kind of work. Hmmmm....

Your thoughts?

;

You would just have to have the ability - to detach

[ In Reply To ..]
detach yourself from it being a "personal" situation. I have several close friends who are dispatchers, medics, and firefighters, and it seems that is what gets them through the stress of it. Now, after the situation is over, a few do crumble a bit. If you find yourself weeping when transcribing a death report? Yeah...That probably wouldn't be a good job for you.

Dispatching - Berta

[ In Reply To ..]
You might also consider that there are dispatchers who work for a variety of other organizations - cabs, delivery companies, trucking companies, phone and cable companies, service businesses like large plumbing or electrical companies, etc. Just about any company that has a fleet of vehicles on the road will probably need a dispatcher.

No dispatching position (emergency or not) is without stress of one kind or another, of course, but some of these other positions wouldn't involve the stress of dealing with people in the midst of a personal crisis of some kind.

P.S. - Berta

[ In Reply To ..]
I should also have mentioned that if you were to become more interested in emergency dispatching but couldn't land a berth right away, experience in some of these other dispatching jobs certainly wouldn't hurt when something opens up at the 911 communications center.

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