Introduction
Emergency Management (EM) is an administration capacity realized within the framework of decreasing vulnerability to threats and coping with disasters. One must recognize that EM is a versatile and multifaceted discipline by nature, essence, and structure. A profession in this field is a controversial phenomenon, causing a polarity of opinions on most aspects discussed. Consequently, issues in this vein are associated mainly with outcomes, including recognition as professionals, education against pieces of training, classroom exercises against workplace experience, and respect for these workers. Emergency management should be considered simultaneously as a diverse career field and a unique profession within the framework of successfully conducting activities to mitigate the consequences of various types of emergencies and respond to them.
Emergency Management Should Become a Profession
One should note that Emergency Management (EM) should become a profession based on its essential and meaningful societal role. In general, EM continues to be at the stage of development and modernization due to the nature of changing hazards, vulnerabilities, and methods of combating them. Almost every day, various natural disasters and emergencies occur in the United States, which can escalate into even more significant catastrophes and cataclysms that negatively affect individuals, societies, and organizations. When wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, or chemical emissions interact with vulnerable people or fragile infrastructures, injuries, deaths, and destructions can follow. Even the most effective prevention measures cannot reduce the chance of emergencies to zero (“the non-zero principle,” “acceptable risk”). Today, it is unattainable to exclude such concerns, but it is possible to significantly decrease the number, scale down and mitigate the developments of crises.
In order to be prepared for these adverse events, emergency management as a profession is vital. In this case, EM is socially valuable and necessary for American civilization activity from the perspective of applying a person’s physical and spiritual forces, which makes it possible to meet the needs of citizens in achieving desired significant results. EM, from the point of view of a professional approach, could bring substantial benefits to the entire state, supporting the well-being of society. A manager will be able to implement a set of measures carried out in advance and aimed at reducing the risk of emergencies as much as possible, as well as preserving people’s health, reducing the amount of damage to the natural environment and material losses in case of their occurrence. Indeed, preventing most natural hazards such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes is impossible. However, there are several dangerous natural phenomena and processes, the negative development of which can be prevented by the purposeful activity of a professional manager.
The designation of professional status to Emergency Management is suggested due to established regulatory requirements. To work in the sphere, an individual must have systematic knowledge and capabilities from purposeful training and labor activity. An emergency manager is a specialist with a capital letter and a professional in their field who is entrusted with significant responsibility for emergency management programs and actions (Sylves, 2019). According to Sylves (2019), this expert collects and allocates resources to cope with hazards while working at all state levels. A manager should be familiar with public law, public administration, environmental policy, and social disasters (Sylves, 2019). Furthermore, a connoisseur in the field of EM is a mentor and teacher in one person, who additionally spends their time training employees according to plausible scenarios in case of a favorable situation in regions. Thus, this aspect of work can be beneficial in preparing for an emergency and requires a mentor with a particular mindset and professional abilities. Accordingly, EM should be a private category with a specific line of activity.
Therefore, Emergency Management is a serious and important matter that demands an extraordinary approach, attention, and hard work. A manager in the field works simultaneously at three stages: micro, meso, and macro levels. The state of the environment, locality, and society, as well as the health and lives of individuals, rely on this person. Based on this fact, it is especially evident that an emergency manager must be a professional, a unique master of their craft, and a highly qualified specialist, including good training, skills, qualifications, and, if necessary, admission to perform duties in the specialty.
Establishing emergency management as a profession is a responsible step in improving, enhancing, modernizing, transforming, and expanding the practice of protecting society, preparedness and response to tragedies, and coordinating and combining actions to mitigate unfavorable outcomes and recover from various threats. Such moment will make it possible to distribute forces and means for disaster prevention optimally, as well as to increase the level of protection of settlements in which the most significant number of people live and extensive production facilities are located. One should view these processes as a multidirectional and continuous path to a better future — innovative, revolutionary, and creative in the area.
Emergency Management Should Not Become a Profession
Emergency Management (EM) should not become a profession due to its diversity, heterogeneity, and multi-functionality. In a sense, EM is a unique field with no specific character. It does not allow one to act professionally since emergency managers are mostly jack-of-all-trades who has moved to a position from fire protection, law, or trade work. In addition, according to Sylves (2019), a natural disaster, by its definition, is a destructive, catastrophic, harmful, and deadly event that cannot be “tamed.” In this way, Emergency Management is perceived as an oxymoron. Confronting nature requires a comprehensive and integrated approach, the implementation of which is possible due to the efforts of several employees but not only a manager. Thus, Emergency Management as a profession means taking on more duties and responsibilities, which is not always effective, productive, and efficient. Width, diversity, depth, and versatility are not always and not, in all cases, necessary elements. Emergency management should be more than a profession, a title, work experience, or specialized training and education. A real EM manager combines a wide range of identical attributes and many other qualities.
Furthermore, it is especially evident that implementing Emergency Management as a profession will require fundamental, drastic changes in education and training systems. Such a process assumes the presence of certain organizational efforts, long-term investments, a considerable amount of time, and other crucial resources. In this regard, this situation urges the development and improvement of special certification programs, supporting the activity of young professionals and middle-level employees based on standardized and unified principles. At a minimum, there should be a thorough body of knowledge, a clearly defined scope of authority, and a specific licensing for independent practice. As practice shows, many emergency managers are former representatives of fire services, law enforcement agencies, and emergency medical services (Sylves, 2019). It is essential to understand that people working in these services have faced events and circumstances beyond the ordinary human experience of everyday life; each profession in the field has its dangers and risks. However, the form of organization and the means for these services to perform their tasks differ. Consequently, newcomers in the sphere will need to receive special education, and current emergency managers will additionally undergo advanced training.
In reality, EM currently provides clearly defined missions, visions, and principles but does not specify professional oversights, education, or licensing. Thus, police and military officers, search and rescuers, firefighters, and social workers are the most common professions, whereas an emergency manager cannot still get on this list. EM is a relatively young field of work, which is still too early to recognize as a profession.
Conclusion
Summarizing the above, one can remark that emergency management should become a profession because of its importance to American society. Being a professional in this field means being able to systematically, efficiently, and reliably perform complex activities in a wide variety of emergency situations and extreme conditions. In truth, EM as a profession will allow one to expand existing methods, methods, tactics, and strategies in relation to troubles at all stages, whether it is a response to a disaster or to experience its consequences.
At the same time, establishing emergency management as a profession is quite bold and is more likely to fail. Emergency Management is rather a diverse and multifaceted direction, a unique field in which specialists with entirely different experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities work. Additional efforts, time, and resources will be required to train employees according to standardized aspects in order to obtain a license for independent practice. Emergency management as a profession is more likely to demonstrate its inefficiency in practice.
Reference
Sylves, R.T. (2019). Disaster policy and politics: Emergency management and homeland security (3rd ed.). CQ Press.