“Perfectly Presented”

On April 11th and 12th I presented to an Officer Development Class at Lauderhill Fire Rescue. I taught to two different groups over the two days and I really learned a lot from this class. The class overall was a class I taught before, “Alphabet Soup- What do all these letters mean anyway?” With nearly 40 participants in the classes, holding ranks from Lieutenant to Fire Chief, we had a lot of fun, laughed, and I answered a lot of questions to help clarify some of the terms associated with the LGBTQ+ community. The Officers were engaging and asked some super interesting questions. They brought up concerns with how best they could help transgender and non-binary patients, like addressing them by their preferred name and assessing medical and potential trauma needs. I learned from them a deeper, more intense curriculum needs to be designed and offered to first responder agencies with vignettes, emergency response scenarios, and best practice protocols. I look forward to creating this new program and offering it to these valuable first responders.  

With relation to the LGBTQ+ community and visibility, I think:

·       I now know why it’s important to understand the letters.

·       why hasn’t this training happened sooner?

·       what else can I do in my personal and professional life to help more

I learned new terms today. They are:

Cis       Pansexual       Intersex           Binary             Nongender

Two-Spirit       Maverique      Trans   Asexual           Xe pronoun

Genderqueer

I thought this training was:

Enlightening    Easy going       Geared to me as a firefighter

Engaging                     Funny             

Non-threatening                     Informational 

Needs to be given to more people