Bella Lipski was in a pre-occupational therapy class at UW-Milwaukee when her professor, Bhagwant Sindhu, began describing his work helping first responders manage the intense stress they face. Lipski listened closely, her excitement building.
She spoke to Sindhu, associate professor of occupational therapy, science and technology, after class. “I told him, ‘My dad’s a firefighter, and this is really cool.’”
Sindhu invited her to sit in on a meeting related to the project, and Lipski ultimately joined his lab as an undergraduate researcher.
As the project progressed and Sindhu began to connect with fire departments in Milwaukee County, he realized that Lipski’s father was not just any firefighter. Aaron Lipski is chief of the Milwaukee Fire Department, and a fourth-generation firefighter.
“It was really intriguing to me that there was a way I could bridge what I was studying with what my family had been involved in for so long,” Lipski said. “Dr. Sindhu is working to make firefighters’ jobs easier and to help improve their well-being and mental health. I liked that we could make a difference in this profession that heavily impacts my family.”
Understanding first responders’ stress
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sindhu began talking with a group of multidisciplinary collaborators at the Medical College of Wisconsin and other community organizations about the intense stressors faced by emergency medical services (EMS) providers, including emergency medicine technicians and paramedics. In many fire departments, firefighters cross-train as EMTs or paramedics.
The number of calls to 911 rose in the pandemic period and have remained elevated since then. Emergency medical services providers can spend their days rushing to disturbing events such as car accidents, house fires, drug overdoses and suicides.
Sindhu, who studies ways to help people manage physical pain and stress, wondered how he could help. He and his team reached out to nine fire departments across the region, in urban, suburban and rural areas, surveying fire department employees to understand the mental and emotional challenges of their work and the supports currently available to them.
They offered emergency medical services providers a phone app that allowed them to choose short, stress-relieving activities such as breathing techniques, walking and mindfulness practices. Sindhu and his team asked participants to complete these activities a few times a week for eight weeks. They also collected data about their blood pressure and heart rate.
This was an early feasibility study to learn if firefighters would be willing to participate, and to determine if a larger study might be possible. “Our participants generally liked the program and found the activities to be meaningful,” Sindhu said. “It gave me a reason to think we need to continue to do this work.”
He and his team are currently writing about these preliminary findings for a forthcoming journal article and hope to obtain funding for future research.
Lipski created a poster about her work assessing the mental health needs of fire department employees, which she presented at UWM’s Undergraduate Research Symposium in April.
The emotional demands of firefighting
Bella Lipski’s father, Aaron Lipski, oversees nearly 800 firefighter-paramedics in the City of Milwaukee and said he is “painfully aware” of the psychological demands of the job; multiple members of the department have died by suicide in recent years. He welcomes the chance to collaborate with Sindhu and his team.
“I want to make sure that we’re turning over every stone trying to find ways to manage this,” he said. “This is another opportunity to get a fresh set of eyes on the problem, and having it research-based and data-based is important.”
A UWM alum who graduated in 2002 with a bachelor’s degree in communication and a Master of Public Administration degree in 2014, Aaron Lipski noted that the emergencies firefighters must address have grown increasingly disturbing over the course of his career. These include opioid overdose deaths, shootings and crashes related to reckless driving.
“I would put our firefighters and paramedics on par with wartime medics right now,” he said. And city firefighters “see growing demand for service for increasingly complex emergencies year over year,” he added. Repeated exposure to these events can take a toll on mental health.
“We’re starting to turn the culture a little bit, where it’s all right to at least discuss these things and to acknowledge that, hey, maybe we need some help,” he said.
Those conversations usually take place at the fire station with colleagues. Most firefighters don’t share these details at home because they don’t want to upset loved ones, he added.
But Lipski is moved that his daughter got involved in this research. “Watching Bella engage on an issue to which I am so personally and professionally attached causes a level of pride I could never have imagined,” he said.
Learning from hands-on research
Bella Lipski graduated in May with her bachelor’s degree in occupational science and technology. She returned to UWM in June to begin working toward a master’s degree in occupational therapy.
Working on this project was eye-opening for her, giving her new understanding of the challenges faced by firefighters, including those in her family.
“Obviously I know this is a hard job and that there are a lot of scary things that they’re seeing,” she said. “But I don’t think I ever really sat and thought, ‘How does that affect a person?’ I’m more aware of it now.”
