New Recruits to Retirement: Increasing Self-Awareness throughout Career

This course will offer a greater understanding of the mental and emotional impacts as a career fire fighter. Attendees will learn about a new recruit’s adjustment to fire service culture, looking deeper into the development of one’s identity into a fire fighter, including how fire service members become a part of a close-knit community. Topics discussed will include improving resiliency and identifying and understanding the impacts of being a fire fighter on oneself and on fire service families.

Attendees will discover protective factors that will help a fire fighter throughout their career and the importance of fire fighter wellness- physical, mental, emotional. Attendees will learn tools to prepare for retirement, including the loss of identity and community. Discussion will be focused on how to set fire fighters up for success after the fire service. (“But once a fire fighter, always a fire fighter”-Kathleen’s Father)