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Role standards

Emergency

Emergency medical dispatcher

What an emergency medical dispatcher must be able to do on a live 911 medical call with nobody listening in: get the location and the problem, run the protocol to a determinant, get the right response moving before the questioning is finished, coach the caller through what they can do until it arrives, and keep the call and the record straight. Drawn from the APCO American National Standard that sets the minimum training a public safety telecommunicator must have before they take calls alone.

Practice this assessmentHire for this role
Expectations
10
Safety red lines
5
Sources
3
Version
1

Built from Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International, International Academies of Emergency Dispatch. Reviewed by clinicians, last on .

01What the role is measured on#

Every verdict is made of the same five dimensions. Each is scored on its own, so a candidate sees where they are strong and where to work.

  • Clinical skillsThe hands-on and judgement work of the role: recognising what matters, acting in the right order, and knowing when something cannot wait.
  • Workflow and toolsGetting the work done in a real setting: the systems, records, equipment and handoffs the role runs on, used correctly and on time.
  • Patient communicationHow the role talks with patients, families and colleagues: listening, explaining plainly, and confirming what was understood.
  • Compliance and safetyThe rules that protect people: privacy, consent, infection control, reporting duties and the safety checks the role is accountable for.
  • Role knowledgeKnowing the job itself: what the role is responsible for, where its scope ends, and who to bring in when it does.

02What a ready hire does#

What a competent emergency medical dispatcher does on day one, dimension by dimension.

Clinical skills

  • Takes control of the call, gets location and callback first, then works the protocol's case entry and key questions to a determinant that matches what the caller is actually describing.
  • Delivers the protocol's pre-arrival instructions word for word and keeps the caller doing them until responders take over.

Workflow and tools

  • Sends the response the determinant calls for from the units actually available, and keeps the board honest as calls and units move.
  • Records the incident as it happens, in the system, so the times and the facts stand up to a review months later.

Patient communication

  • Keeps control of a call where the caller is screaming, abusive, frozen or in crisis, and gets the information and the actions out of them without losing them.
  • Gets an interpreter or the right accessible route onto the call fast, and keeps running the protocol through it.

Compliance and safety

  • Gets the call to dispatch at the earliest point the protocol allows, and passes every change to the people going to the scene with confirmation that they received it.
  • Treats what is heard on a call and held in the system as confidential, and releases it only through the routes the agency and the law allow.

Role knowledge

  • Works inside the protocol and the agency's authority, gives no medical advice or opinion of their own, and never decides a caller does not need help.
  • Works as one part of a response with field crews, other agencies and the hospital, and gives each of them what they need in the form they can use.

03Safety red lines#

Any one of these keeps a candidate from Ready Day One, whatever the rest of the score. They are published so nobody meets them for the first time in the assessment.

  • Accepts a caller's word that the patient is breathing when the description is gasping, snoring or occasional breathing, and processes the call at a lower priority, so a cardiac arrest is not identified and telephone CPR is never started.

    Agonal breathing is the commonest reason an arrest is missed on the phone, and every minute without compressions costs about ten percent of the chance of survival.

  • Holds a life-threatening call for further questioning before anything is sent, or passes a critical change - a corrected address, a weapon on scene, a patient who has stopped breathing - without confirming that units or the receiving agency actually received it.

    Information that nobody confirms receiving is information nobody has, and a response sent to the wrong place or into an unannounced hazard puts both the patient and the crew at risk.

  • Sends a lower level of response than the determinant assigns, or cancels or downgrades a response on the caller's request, a crew's guess or their own judgment, without the authority the protocol gives for it.

    The determinant is the agency medical director's decision about what this patient needs, and a dispatcher who quietly overrules it is making a clinical call from a desk with no patient in front of them.

  • Ends the call on a caller who is hysterical, abusive or in crisis, or tells them to call somebody else, before the location and problem are established and help is on the way.

    The caller is the only set of hands the patient has, and a disconnected call is a patient nobody is going to.

  • Gives medical advice or an opinion that is not in the protocol - telling a caller what is wrong, that it is nothing serious, to drive the patient themselves, or to give a medication or a dose - or refuses to send a response the protocol assigns.

    A dispatcher is not assessing the patient and cannot see them, and a caller who is told it is probably nothing may not call again.

04Outside the role#

Knowing where the role stops is part of the standard. Going past it is not extra credit.

  • Does not diagnose, and does not tell a caller what is wrong, that it is not serious, or that an ambulance is not needed.Says plainly that they cannot tell over the phone, runs the protocol, and sends what the determinant assigns.
  • Does not give medical instructions, medication or dosing advice that the protocol does not contain, however reasonable it sounds.Gives the protocol's pre-arrival instructions and refers anything else to the responding crew, a supervisor, medical control or poison control.
  • Does not release call content, caller details or system information to the public, the media, family or colleagues without a need to know.Passes it to those handling the incident and refers every other request to the agency's records process.
  • Does not counsel or treat a caller in a behavioural health crisis, and does not decide who is at risk of suicide.Keeps the caller talking, gets the location, sends the response the protocol assigns, and brings in the crisis or behavioural health route the agency uses.
  • Does not work from a remembered version of a protocol, because the cards, the determinants and the instruction scripts are issued under the agency's medical director and change.Uses the current protocol as published in the agency's system and raises a call the protocol did not fit for review.

05How it is assessed#

  • A spoken assessment

    An examiner talks the candidate through realistic cases from this role, and follows up the way a senior colleague would.

  • Five dimensions

    Each answer is read against the expectations above and rated on the same four-level scale.

  • The 70 bar

    Every scorecard shows the score against 70, overall and for each dimension, with the reason for the verdict.

  • Safety first

    Crossing one of the safety red lines holds a pass back, however strong the rest was.

The four levels

  1. Not yet
  2. Developing
  3. Proficient
  4. Exemplary
How a verdict is made

06Sources and review#

Drawn from the certification frameworks and practice standards below, and reviewed by clinicians. Version 1, last reviewed .

Cited as sources. Not an endorsement by the organizations named.

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