JOURNAL

The National EMD Journal

The Journal of Emergency Dispatch is the official publication of the National Academies of Emergency Dispatch (NAED) and the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch (IAED). The Journal is free to members and comes out six times a year. It is designed to keep emergency dispatchers, center directors, quality assurance personne, and others interested in emergency dispatch protocol in tune with research and advice from field experts.

Each Issue contains articles about:

• Protocol: Every issue contains two articles written by experts who address issues in the use of medical, fire, and police protocols. A passing score on the self-test exam at the end of each article counts toward one continuing dispatch education unit (CDE) with the Academy.
• Views: We answer questions members send about the appropriate use of protocol, and we present our views about the state-of-the-art use of the medical, fire, and police protocol.
• Best Practices: We take a look at the industry and provide examples of communications centers and staff meeting and exceeding quality standards.
• Profiles: The Journal features stories about dispatchers on the job: their most memorable calls or the culmination of experiences that makes an individual top notch.
• The Workings: We also keep you posted about the goings on at the NAED offices – the products, the staff, and stories we hear from our readers, and what's coming in the future.

But that's not all. Each issue also features industry updates, news about the national and international Navigator conferences, tips for optimal use of the ProQA software, and columns written by NAED Founder Jeff Clawson and NAED President Scott Freitag. Readers can also look forward to articles written by industry experts such as Brett Patterson, Jim Lanier, Greg Spencer, Greg Scott, Eric Parry, Ross Rutschman, Jay Dornseif, and others actively involved in dispatch protocol.

Corrections

Please check this page, also, for any corrections to the Journal's content.

Correction: The first paragraph of the Fire CDE published in the Summer Journal was inadvertently deleted prior to publication, and the missing information is necessary for answering two of the CDE questions (Questions 1 and 2). We apologize for the inconvenience. The paragraph is as follows:

Train Protocol 70 is a seldom-used protocol in the Fire Priority Dispatch System™ (FPDS), which should come as no surprise considering the following statistics:

• The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) reports that there are only four train accidents per million train miles logged in the United States 

• Over the 10-year period 1995-2005 the FRA reported an average of 3,000 train accidents occurring in the United States every year

• More than two-thirds of the 3,000 reportable accidents involved a derailment and the derailments happened more often on yard track compared to main line tracks