Photo By Ericka Gillespie | Assistant Fire chief of EMS, Fire and Emergency Services, Robert Fleming, stands in...... read more read more
FORT GREGG-ADAMS, Va. – Following in his father’s footsteps, Assistant Fire Chief of Emergency Medical Services Robert P. Fleming has worked his way up through the ranks while inspiring his team and helping others.
“While growing up I watched my dad work as a fire captain,” Fleming said. “I knew at an early age that I wanted to follow in his footsteps when I got older.”
Originally from Arizona, Fleming and his family now call Virginia home.
At age 14, Fleming joined his dad’s department’s “Fire Explorer” program which allowed high school students to volunteer and assist the crew members of the station. Every weekend, he worked a 24-hour shift at his dad’s station which alternated between riding on the engine or in the ambulance, depending on what type of call they received.
“I loved every second of it and knew I wanted to make it a career,” he said.
To attend the academy and join the Fire Department, Fleming needed to be 21. Upon graduating high school, he had to look at alternate routes for the time in between. This led him to a four-and-a-half-year career in the Army.
Fleming joined the Army as a 68W – combat medic. This path afforded him the opportunity to gain his Emergency Medical Training certification, as well as experience from two deployments to Iraq.
When he was discharged in late 2009, Fleming recalls the nation was still shaken from the financial collapse of 2008, so no fire departments were hiring where he lived.
“I spent the next few years working on an ambulance in the inner city of my hometown before I joined a wildland fire team and eventually a local fire department,” Fleming said.
While moving around jobs over the years, he recalled working a rotation in an emergency room in Arizona. That rotation soon became Fleming’s “why,” behind the reason he loves what he does.
“We had a patient who had just suffered a stroke and had complete paralysis to one side of his body,” he said.
The patient was a candidate for a medication used for strokes. Shortly after receiving the medication, the clot in the patient’s brain began to dissolve and blood flow returned to the affected part of his brain.
“When this happened, he started regaining feeling and movement to his arm and leg and he began to cry because he was thankful for not only the care he received, but that it he would regain his ability to enjoy his life,” he said.
In 2017, Fort Gregg-Adams (then Fort Lee) called and offered Fleming a firefighter/paramedic position and he’s been here ever since working up through the ranks.
Today, the 37-year-old is the program manager for the Fort Gregg-Adams Fire and Emergency Services EMS mission which consists of 15 firefighter/paramedics and three ambulances that are assigned to the departments three fire stations on the installation.
Of the three ambulances, one ambulance is in a ready-reserve status, the second is assigned to Station two, across from the Main PX, and the third is assigned to Station three, across from the garrison headquarters.
Together, Fleming and his personnel provide emergency medical care to the installation as well as mutual aid to the surrounding communities such as Colonial Heights, Hopewell, Prince George County and Petersburg.
To ensure his team is up to date on all their certifications, Fleming coordinates with organizations that will provide training certification courses in advanced life support as well as bringing in subject matter experts from local hospitals to teach his providers how to crucially react during critical emergencies.
“The growth of our team as they seek out ways to not only make this organization better but to increase the care, they can provide to our customers inspires me,” he said.
Fleming hopes to inspire his team the way they inspire and motivate him.
“I may not always have the right answer,” he said. “But my philosophy is that we’re going to find that answer together and I’m going to do everything I can to give these providers what they need to succeed.”
Knowing his team, both professionally and personally, he hopes to help each member accomplish their goals. He explains that these goals can consist of a wide variety of things like attending training classes, becoming a better provider or going to college.
“When we can help our team accomplish their goals, it helps us as a whole,” he said.
| Date Taken: | 06.10.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 06.10.2024 08:24 |
| Story ID: | 473480 |
| Location: | FORT GREGG-ADAMS, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 49 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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