Three months ago, Courtney Bass was working as a nurse at Mercy Medical Center in Aurora. During her shifts in the emergency room, she’d notice an undeniable pride in the paramedics she met.
“They were like, ‘Oh, I love my job, I love my job, I love my job,’” the 29-year-old recalled.
Now, Bass is on her way to becoming a paramedic — and firefighter — herself thanks to a novel entryway made possible by the Naperville Fire Department.
Amid ongoing difficulties with recruitment, public safety agencies in Naperville are exploring creative solutions to filling their ranks, like hiring registered nurses as firefighter/paramedics and sending out recruitment letters to college athletic programs.
And while it’s too soon know the outcome of such efforts, officials say they’re eager to see what their creativity will yield and keen to keep thinking outside the box.
‘World has changed’
When the fire department used to stage orientations for those interested in learning more about a firefighting career 15 or 20 years ago, it wasn’t unusual to see as many as 800 people attend, according to Naperville Fire Chief Mark Puknaitis.
In recent years, it’s been more challenging, he said.
“We just don’t see the numbers of people come out and do the orientations anymore that we used to,” Pukniatis said. “And I think (it’s) because the world has changed around us.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, increased the number of remote work jobs. That, in turn, has made careers like public safety a harder sell, he said.
“People in this day and age … want mobility,” he said. “They want to be able to go and live wherever they want.”
Another challenge is a lack of paramedics, Puknaitis said. A 2022 study by the American Ambulance Association and Newton 360 found the turnover among paramedics and emergency medical technicians across the country ranges from 20% to 30% annually.
Emergency medical service accounts for more than 70% of the calls to which Naperville fire responds, Puknaitis said.
The demand for firefighter/paramedics has “grown immensely,” said John Buckley, executive director of the Illinois Fire Chiefs Association (IACF).
“Pretty much (every department) in the Chicago area has some type of paramedic service,” he said. “Not everybody, but most.”
Finding and recruiting enough paramedics to meet the needs of the state’s fire departments has been a focus of the IACF for a decade now, Buckley said.
In 2023, a state task force was created to study the recruitment and retainment of firefighters and paramedics in Illinois. Asked about its status, an Illinois State Fire Marshal spokesman said in an email that the group’s “collaborative efforts to formulate ideas” continues and a final report is “still a work in progress.”
Recruitment challenges exist in law enforcement as well.
Last summer, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) conducted a survey to better understand the challenges police agencies face with recruitment and retention. Of the 1,158 U.S. agencies that responded, more than 70% reported recruitment is more difficult now than five years ago.
Locally, the Naperville Police Department is seeing a smaller pool of applicants than in years past, Police Chief Jason Arres said. To illustrate the change, Arres pointed to police testing.
Becoming a Naperville police officer is a multistep process that starts with a written exam, the results of which determine the candidates who will move on to receive an interview, polygraph test, medical and psychological exams and background check. The results of those steps produce a list of candidates eligible for hire. Police test every two years or when the eligibility list is exhausted, whichever comes first, Arres said.
NPD has seen a drop off in the number of people taking the initial written exam in the last few years.
In 2020, 455 people tested, with 303 candidates passing and 152 failing, according to city data. In 2022, 37 people tested, data shows. Less than half passed. Those numbers crept up last year, with 132 people testing in February followed by 141 in December. However, recent tests still haven’t been on par with numbers pre-2020, when the department would consistently have 250 to 300 passing candidates.
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Arres attributed the drop to several factors, from the pandemic to the 2020 killing of George Floyd that spurred nationwide protests against police brutality and heightened scrutiny of law enforcement.
“Those are difficult circumstances that we (have) had to overcome while recruiting,” he said. Difficulties, however, have inspired ingenuity.
Recruitment ‘hotbeds’
Over the past year, NPD has been invited to job fairs never before on its radar, Arres said. That’s because the department has started to recruit from college athletic programs and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) across the Midwest, he said.
The former was born out of the department seeking candidates who shared similar traits — being goal-oriented, for example — as successful police officers, he said.
“Athletes have to work hard to start and earn that role on a team,” Arres said. “There’s an understanding and appreciation of that, and they thrive in team environments. There’s not much of a bigger team environment than working at a police department.”
To that end, NPD has mailed recruitment letters and fliers to more than 50 Midwest college and university athletic departments.
They have likewise sent scores of letters out to HBCUs to help recruit a more diverse range of candidates, Arres said.
So far, the department hasn’t “realized the fruits of these efforts yet” because they’re so new but the department will “continue this practice,” he said.
“I do think that we’re going to knock some walls down and start opening up some recruiting hotbeds that we’ve never really tapped into before,” he said.
NPD has adjusted its requirements as well so candidates don’t need to have a bachelor’s degree to apply, only an associate degree, Arres said.
The department also recently partnered with Naperville School District 203 to create a “micro-internship” between police and local students. This past semester, they had a student intern who helped the department with its social media presence and marketing strategies, Arres said.
While it’s not a sure-fire pipeline to get people into policing, it’s still an opportunity for the department to get its name out there, he said.
“Maybe this student doesn’t become a police officer,” he said. “Maybe he does or maybe he gets into government and police communications and someday works for our department in that space.”
Turning to nurses
As NPD looks to athletes and HBCUs, the Naperville Fire Department is turning to nurses.
Up until about 18 months ago, getting hired as an entry level firefighter in Naperville required a paramedic license. The department has since expanded the requirement to allow for registered nurses as long as they go through a paramedic bridge program through Edward Hospital in Naperville, Puknaitis said.
“It doesn’t get us the amount of candidates that we had in previous years,” he said. “But we have enough candidates to fill the positions that we’re looking for.”
Recruiting nurses right now is primarily by world of mouth, he said. The department may expand from there to draw on a wider scope of medical personnel, he said.
“If you are anything — from a medical perspective — above the license of a paramedic … we’re looking at opening these gates even further in allowing people to do that,” Puknaitis said.
He used a medical doctor as an example. As requirements stand now, a physician couldn’t apply to be a firefighter/paramedic in Naperville. But the department could, and may, make that change, Puknaitis said.
From an age standpoint, the department has started to recruit younger candidates. The department, which next year will have 33 members eligible for retirement, currently hires firefighter/paramedics starting at age 21 but it allows high school graduates to start the application process at age 19, Puknaitis said.
‘We’ve opened up our nets, so to speak, to capture as many people as possible,” he said.
For Bass, training to be a firefighter/paramedic has been one of the hardest things she’s ever done — but also the most rewarding, she said. She wants the career change to be a permanent one.
“I feel sold,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else at this point.”
The Associated Press contributed.
