Hi, fbi here. Former SCMS paramedic, former SCFD Chief Paramedic, former FFA Deputy Director. Before I get started, allow me to emphasise that this is all based on my own opinions and experiences and does not represent the opinions of any department or individual I have served with. I’m impulsive and I felt like writing this, feel free to listen or ignore it.
The Role of FFA
I’ve served in FFA sporadically since 2021, in every role from Junior Training Officer to Acting Director. I’ll try and keep this short: some people misunderstand the basic principles of FFA. FFA’s purpose (EMS-wise) is to provide the initial foundation training for all pre-hospital medicine in the state of firestone, particularly for those with no prior knowledge or experience. Anyone who isn’t completely stupid can get into FFA, and if you seek clarification on the things you don’t understand, support will definitely be given to you, it’s not as hard as people make it out to be. Anyway, some of you like to criticise FFA’s teaching style, because some of you think FFA’s job is to turn people into perfect medics, which it isn’t. The very insightful poll I conducted demonstrated that most people don’t have an issue with the teaching style (or at least it’s not considered a pressing issue relative to other things mentioned on the same poll). If you’re going to slate FFA and the way it does stuff, remember that FFA staff frequently dedicate several hours to ensuring recruits fully understand the content and that a lot of FFA recruits are literal kids. It’s mostly the IRL medical people who tend to have a bone to pick with the fire academy, which is gonna be a recurring theme I’m gonna elaborate on in this post.
Supervisory Board
Under the healthcare act of 2024, the department of health has 4 positions which are legally entitled to be voting members on the board (for all medical matters from certification revocations to scope of practice changes). There’s also a position for a civilian who’s got at least an EMT-B cert to be a voting member, and this position is also filled by someone who is employed in the department of health (albeit I think he may be on admin leave at the moment - I’m not certain). The point is, the department of health holds 5 out of 11 voting positions on the board, giving them a majority. To put this into context, every other department besides 9th med has only the cabinet and subcabinet member on the board in a voting position. This is not to throw shade at any of those guys - I may disagree with some of them on most things but I respect their knowledge and experience.
Point is, I’ve felt for a while now that the healthcare act needs to rework the positions on the board since DOH holds significantly more power. This brings me to my next point which only occurred to me after I was updating curriculum for EMS as FFA Deputy Director to line up with the most recent scope of practice updates. Contrary to what some believe, accuracy and realism does play a role in FFA operations, so I had to go away and spend my valuable time researching various (useless) medications, because there was a majority vote from the supervisory board to change the scopes. I think that DOH’s role needs to be redefined to focus on the hospital. Control of pre-hospital curriculum and scopes should be handed over to FFA (mostly because it’s hardly fair that a bunch of people who don’t have to do the work get to vote on things which then affect FFA operations). DOH supervisory board should be reformed to focus solely on hospital medicine, which I think would be beneficial to DOH and FFA. FFA can create it’s own committee/board to regulate pre-hospital medicine while DOH can have their own for hospital medicine. The way the act defines voting positions means some people that could provide valuable insight to the board on hospital-based stuff (e.g. granting MD certifications) are not granted a voting position (albeit they can be voted on as advisors/non-voting members) in favour of people like myself who feel under-qualified to be voting on such proposals (I have 0 experience working in the hospital - for MD proposals I either abstain or ask for opinions from people who know more than me). Like I said about DOH being able indirectly control FFA operations - I don’t think DOH want FFA to be voting on and indirectly controlling hospital certifications/operations.
FFA is definitely in a position to create it’s own version of the supervisory board and has been trusted for years to control firefighter certifications unilaterally, no reason not to extend their control to EMS (especially as the sole provider of EMS foundation training in the state of firestone)
TL;DR rebalance the supervisory board so DOH doesn’t have overall control or hand over control of pre-hospital policy and certifications to FFA allowing DOH supervisory board to focus on hospital stuff only.
Real Life Medics
When I joined in 2021, there were definitely still a few people with IRL medical experience, though far fewer than there were now. Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way against people with IRL certs joining EMS departments, they can really prove their worth and be of great assistance. However, as the number of people with IRL certs have increased, there’s been more of you guys who spend all your time complaining that firestone scopes don’t 100% reflect what you work with in real life.
To you people I say: cope harder. Firestone never revolved around medical and it’s not likely to change any time soon. It has and probably always will be mostly a cops and robbers game, you will have realised this pretty quick upon joining the state. You need to realise, above all else, that medical protocols in this state do not revolve around you and are not designed to be ultra-realistic in the way that some of you desperately desire. FFA staff already spend several hours on a typical EMS tier making sure recruits fully understand the content. It’s no easy feat, it’s not for everyone and it’s no wonder nobody wants to apply to be FFA staff when it takes up so much of your time compared to other departments where you just log 30 minutes then get on with your life. If you’re looking for ultra-realistic medical-focused roleplay then there’s other groups that fill this role, you and I both know that’s not what firestone is for. This game doesn’t revolve around your desire for super-realistic roleplay, most people in firestone don’t want to be doing NREMT just to treat people on a roblox game (I am exaggerating but you see my point). The current curriculum, imo, is a decent-ish balance between “realism” and keeping things simple enough for the average firestone citizen to engage with effectively.
I also dislike how CCEMT-P has become a certification primarily filled with people that have IRL experience, when I controlled this program I favoured those without IRL experience because I didn’t want it to become a kind of unofficial “club” for real life medics that would exclude people who just liked more advanced medical roleplay. Not gonna start naming names or anything but some of you just suggest stupid shit for “realism” because you seemingly fail to realise that I can’t teach this to a class of 14 year olds (assuming they can even be bothered to pay attention for that long).
Scopes of Practice
While I appreciate the need (and have been responsible for myself) for “upkeep” of scopes of practice, there’s been multiple total overhauls of scopes during my time as a firestone medic and it’s just fucking stupid and frankly, selfish (sometimes). It’s not always the case but a lot of the time people propose overhauls or changes of scope because of what they personally want to be able to with little to no consideration of the wider implications: Frequent curriculum changes is the joint-biggest issue highlighted by my FFA poll. 99% of people who are already certified won’t bother to update themselves on any scope changes (most people who have passed FFA don’t care enough about this game to continually improve their competency through training or reading curriculum updates). It’s not so bad now but frequent updates to curriculum make it harder for people to keep up with what they can and can’t do, nobody’s gonna check their scope every time they go on shift.
Firestone Fire Academy as a Recruit
For people who are currently in FFA or intend to apply in the future, don’t let me or others put you off. FFA isn’t as hard as people tell you it is and you get out what you put in. Having done this on and off for the best part of 4 years, trust me when I say that the best way to ensure your success is to ask instructors about every little thing you’re unsure of. Most FFA staff are fantastic people and they will not hesitate to go over things with you multiple times to make sure you understand it.
Firestone Fire Academy as Staff
I disagreed with card’s mass invitations of people to FFA staff (but I left FFA so tbh I’m beyond caring), because while FFA always needs more staff, inviting people has historically been unsuccessful as they get fired or leave pretty quickly relative to people who had to do an application. Don’t let FFA consume your life (back in the old days under CaptainCrosslay me and madi would grind out like 12 tiers a week, I had no life) but don’t let people convince you that it’s not worth it. If FFA was no fun at all I wouldn’t have continued to go back, it can be truly rewarding seeing someone understand a concept based on what you taught them, and they then go on to have great success in DOH and/or SCFD.
sorry for long post
for what is probably truly actually the final last time, fbi out 
To those who are doing good work, keep it up but don’t let firestone dominate your life. To those who aren’t; shut the fuck up
feel free to debate me on my opinions (i may be slightly under the influence so i apologise for the ass structure)
you would have done well