# leadership



## childs56 (27 Jun 2004)

Well here goes. We all wonder why morale of the troops, sailors and airmen is so low. I have one fine example of the modern day leadership of the CF. Here my class is we have one guy at mir for stomach pains and the rest of us doing our work. An hour later the course directer Sgt &*^%$#@!@# comes into our class room and asks us who has a car and is caught up in class. One guy puts up his hand reluctantly and says he was, the Sgt then says that our course mate needs a ride to the hospital in town. So the guy goes off to give our course mate a ride to town. a couple of things here first, one is why not use the base driver to get the student to the hospital? why didnt the Sgt himself or one of the staff drive the student to the hospita, last but not least why did the hospital duty driver not drive the person to the hospital. as it turns out it was a case of appendicitus and the guy was in pretty bad shape. is it not the job of the medical staff to transport sick patients to the hospital, what if the driver on our course had an accident.or somthing else had gone wrong. the fact is the course directer ( course WO) should not be asking fellow students to be driving people to the hospital during training  hours.
as it turns out the base hospital was having a minimuim manning day and was short staffed, so they did not have a driver and well as for the base taxi or one of the course staff i really dont know, the people on my course were very dissapointed that the school that teachs Profesionalism and excellance stooped to the level of having one of the students drive a fellow course mate to the hopsital. when the guy was in poor shape. and should have been driven by the medics themselves
this might seem like B ing but i had never seen this happen from the army side of things. even the guys in the navy on my course hadn't seen this happen before. and we wonder why morale is down the tubes for some people its because the leadership does not lead, they take the easist way out of a situation and normally ask the lower downs to take up the slack any ways guys i am sure everyone has an opinion on this so lets here it


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## NavyGrunt (27 Jun 2004)

If thats the worst you ever see then your lucky. I understand that your upset about it but if your mate is okay I don't see the big deal. At least they didnt make him "soldier" through it like my torn rotator cuff. Of course driving yourselves around is a little bizarre....hmm. what course is this? PLQ?


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## bossi (27 Jun 2004)

Perhaps somebody did an "Estimate of the Situation", and came to the conclusion that this was the fastest way to get your coursemate to the hospital as opposed to waiting for a civilian ambulance (i.e. "Selection and Maintenance of The Aim" meant that getting him to the hospital quickly was perhaps the most important factor, while "Economy" dictated that a fellow student driving him there was more efficient than shutting down the MIR/hospital and/or cancelling your course for the day ... and, keep in mind - if there was another medical emergency and the only medic was already gone ... things could have gotten worse).

Yes, at first glance this doesn't make perfect sense - however, it's the new reality in the CF - not enough resources or personnel to do everything.

Somebody had to make a decision, and made it quickly.  As long as your course mate lived ... it wasn't the worst decision.
That's my two cents' worth (and, no - I'm not a buddy of your course staff - I've no idea where this took place, but oddly enough I saw somebody with appendicitis delivered to our MIR recently ... and we don't have a Duty Driver, nor do we have a military ambulance/firefighers/police on standby ... and so, we're reduced to phoning "911" if it's a real emergency requiring lots of police, firefighters or an ambulance.  Reality bites.)


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## RCA (28 Jun 2004)

The qustion I would have is where is the rest of the crse staff. Duties and responsbilities of the staff is to look after the crse on all levels. 

And suppose nobody had caught up. Wait to end of class?

Without all the facts its hard to draw any conclusions, but does seem a funny way to handle the situation.


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## bossi (28 Jun 2004)

Good point (re: "where were all the other crse staff").
However, we don't know all the facts.
In theory, there should have been a crse storeman ... with a vehicle ... maybe
(who knows - maybe he or she was elsewhere, and thus we return to "the fastest method").
We also don't know how acute the attack was, thus we don't really know the degree of urgency.
Nor do we know what trg was scheduled later that day, and what the risks were for further injuries/sickness.

My point is simply that we don't have all the facts, and thus have to exercise caution in passing judgement.


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## Infanteer (28 Jun 2004)

How is this a problem with leadership in the CF?  Sounds more procedural to me.


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## childs56 (28 Jun 2004)

here are some more facts on this one, they have any number of staff in their office at any one time, the MIR was on a stand down (hmm friday morning sick parade) and the base taxi ,duty driverwas also on a minumium manning. as for the leadership aspect of this. the lack of a good sound descision here is what is disconcerning, the sgt asked a QL3 student to drive a guy to the hospital, the driver did not know exactly where to go and had to go off of directions that were not very clear
i myself when i have instructed soldiers and they had to go to the local hospital we had the duty driver or one of the staff take them their, that way we new as staff that they were their and safe. sounds kind of babysitting but yes that is what you do to QL3's. 
this is my observations here but the airforce seems to run things their own way and they would not want to inconvience their staff in the least bit, seems like their are very few procedure to follow and what ones they do have are very loosly followed. i just feel good strong leadership would not have made a poor descision such as this and would have taken care of getting the injured person their them selves. any ways have a good day every one , and they guy is back here now and doing well


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