Impactful Injury Prevention in the Tactical Setting: Key Takeaways from the City of Stevens Point
The City of Stevens Point Fire and Police Departments have collaborated on a comprehensive injury care and prevention program for more than a decade. The initial program was based primarily around fitness assessments that provided indicators for potential physical issues. Success with fitness testing led to program enhancements that have resulted in cost savings of over $2 million for the city.
The current program supports approximately 100 employees, addressing both work-related and non-work-related injuries. Services include early intervention, rehabilitation, ergonomic assessments, job site analysis, strength & conditioning, and wellness initiatives. These services, which total 11 hours weekly, are all delivered onsite at City of Stevens Point by the Advanced Tactical Medicine.
The proactive and innovative approaches used at SPFD & SPPD highlight the value of investing in a tailored injury care and prevention program that enhances both employee health and organizational efficiency. It also speaks to power of relationships and the importance of having an onsite provider with the necessary expertise and experience to bring it all together.
To get a better (and more personal) view of how such a program can and should work, it’s crucial to get the backstory.
Today, we begin with the Stevens Point Police Department.
While the hackneyed take of police officers eyeing up a box of nearby donuts may never go away, think of this: most sedentary jobs don’t include having to go from a seated position to top speed in order to respond to an emergency situation that puts both body and psyche at risk.
Such stressors are not an employee norm. But in the police world, it’s a given. And every officer understands that witnessing trauma and devastation comes with the job.
Enter Chief of Police Robert Kussow. A 26-year veteran of SPPD, Kussow has held positions of patrol officer, school resource officer, patrol supervisor, sensitive crimes detective, operations sergeant, lieutenant of the investigative bureau and assistant chief.
So, yeah, he’s seen a lot.
“I first met Traci (Traci Tauferner, Director of Advanced Tactical Medicine) when she started a weight loss competition here. That first year I actually kept adding holes to my belt because I was losing weight,” says Kussow. “Yeah, that was a pretty good year.”
Kussow initiated some modifications that year: improved eating habits (subject to change), the addition of cardio to workouts consisting mainly of lifting, running a 5K, the adoption of a more open mindset when it came to nutrition and exercise.
And he stuck with those changes for the most part until an injury derailed things. A member of the Department’s SWAT team for 18 years, Kussow was no stranger to the yearly training drills done with other law enforcement
agencies at Fort McCoy. As he was looking to transition out of SWAT, the 2019 training session was to be Kussow’s last.
He made sure of that with a single jump.
The two-day session starts with an obstacle course, one Kussow had conquered many times before. You can see where this is headed.
“Of all the equipment we did, walls we scaled, all that stuff, this was a four-foot wall that you jump over and land in a ditch on the other side. The easiest thing, really,” he says.
Kussow stuck the landing and tore the meniscus right off the bone. He’d continue the course, which ended with a long stretch of monkey bars and a significant drop. His compatriots knew Kussow was hurting and were there to help him finish the course.
Following surgery to reattach the meniscus to his right knee, it was six weeks before Kussow could put any pressure on it. He then began seeing a physical therapist three times a week while working with Tauferner on the other two days upon his return to SPPD for light duty.
Goal number one for Tauferner was to help Kussow get back range of motion. Working in concert with Kussow’s surgeon, Tauferner pushed him to get back to where he needed to be. Tauferner was, in the words of Kussow, pretty tough.
Credit her military background. Or her vast knowledge of strength and conditioning interventions. Either way, Kussow was getting back to full strength. Tauferner put Kussow through testing he had to pass before he was cleared to return to full duty, tests which included lifting weights, running, and jumping fences.
Kussow returned way ahead of schedule. He identifies an important connection made during his own rehab process, one that is he applies to the entire department.
“The physical and mental health of the squad is very important,” says Kussow. “And in order to have good mental health, you have to have good physical health.”
************
To get a sense of the current state of the SPPD officer wellness program, just follow Tauferner to her office.
It’s a long journey, but not because the office is located in a far corner of the facility away from any serious foot traffic. That was in the old days. The trek to her office is actually quite short, as it sits smack dab in the center of the stationhouse.
It takes a while because there is a conversation between Tauferner and EVERY member of the Department she encounters, and that is no small number on this Wisconsin winter morning.
Tauferner’s experience working with tactical groups – police, firefighters, paramedics – puts her in the unique position of understanding the challenges these groups face as well as being able to do something about them. Every wellness program must be tailored to a group’s needs and, just as important, budget. At SPPD, the initial program was based primarily around fitness assessments that provide indicators for potential physical issues.
These assessments proved crucial in a number of ways:
· Provides data: It’s one thing to have an idea that a group of officers might benefit from better fitness routines and habits. It’s quite another to have quantitative measures for every individual that can be used to predict and mitigate injury risk.
· Creates a different mindset: Implementing a workplace wellness program can help shift attitudes and get officers to recognize the importance of self-care.
· Starts a conversation: A group admittedly weak at caring for itself, officers need to be healthy in order to perform essential tasks and meet citizen expectations. Having an onsite, consistent support presence increases opportunities to get physical and emotional challenges out in the open and addressed.
The success of fitness testing led to program enhancements such as onsite rehab. Tauferner’s bread and butter are strength and conditioning interventions, which she provides to officers on an as-needed basis. Could be an officer experiencing a hitch in their giddy-up, or someone who needs help rehabbing after surgery. Perhaps it’s an ergonomic issue, where a computer needs to be moved or a chair requires an adjustment to provide relief.
Such visits often begin with the hope that a nagging pain can be addressed. This opens the door, providing an opportunity to broach other issues and bring them to light.
If Tauferner gets the call to work on a tight quad with ultrasound, cupping, or instrument-assisted soft tissue mobilizations, she knows this is the perfect time to make a few inquiries. And if that call isn’t made, officers still have required fitness testing twice a year.
“Many of the officers don’t see their primary care physician, so I get a couple of times a year to check in on their health, their blood pressure, their heart rate, their flexibility,” says Tauferner. “It’s an opportunity to start a conversation and suggest some help.”
To emphasize the point, Tauferner relates the story of a firefighter complaining of heartburn. No biggie he says, and he’s ready to shrug it off. Tauferner tells him to sit down so she can take his blood pressure. It measures 180/110.
“I suggest you go to the ER right now,” says Tauferner.
Turned out the officer was having a heart attack and had an arterial blockage in the left anterior descending artery commonly known by another name: “the widowmaker.” Following a flight for life, open heart surgery was immediately performed.
The officer frequently thanks Tauferner for her life-saving abilities; she points to the flight crew and hospital staff who provided care. Though minimizing her role in the outcome, she is a serious advocate for the testing she performs.
“He had symptoms that were questionable, and the assessment confirmed it,” says Tauferner.
And it all starts with a conversation.
Positive interactions like these drove the implementation of other services that could make an impact on the individual and organization alike: early intervention, rehabilitation, ergonomic assessments, job site analysis, strength & conditioning. And by having these services available onsite, issues can be addressed quickly and conveniently, leading to a safe and rapid return to duty.
When starting a program, initial conversations about wellness tend to be broad in scope. Chief Kussow has been around long enough to see the trajectory of the program at SPPD and how those conversations have changed.
“What started with a general notion of getting officers in better shape, say, how many push-ups or sit-ups can you do, has been taken to the next level and beyond,” said Kussow.
That means bringing relevancy to testing by looking at job requirements. Instead of a test that simply measures running speed, you measure the length of your high school to find out how far an officer would need to run in order to clear a school. Instead of a simple climbing test, you find the city ordinances that specify how high the fences are that officers must be able to climb. And you factor in the amount of gear that is worn.
“Now we have testing that is relevant to what our community expects officers to be able to do,” says Kussow.
Tauferner speaks to the trajectory of the fitness testing as well, the initial focus of which was the Functional Fitness assessment, which tests body composition, waist circumference, functional movement, and cardio.
In the early stages, there were a lot of below-average scores on the exams, which indicated a need for increased levels of fitness. Over the course of the program, scores have improved significantly, so much so that Tauferner recommended reducing the number of times per year the test was given.
With the betterment of scores, new questions arise from leadership: Are we satisfied with where we’re at? What steps can we take to get to the next level of improvement? Are there other factors we need to consider?
With SPPD, Tauferner also utilizes a Functional Movement Screen (FMS), a test first widely used in the military to assess basic body movements to ensure service members would be able to perform assigned military duties. A test with obvious crossover capabilities for other tactical groups, FMS identifies strong predictors of future injury risk – deficiencies in balance, core stability, flexibility, and mobility – through a series of specific movements.
Used in concert with physical fitness testing, the FMS is key to developing appropriate and effective injury prevention programs, says Tauferner.
The relationship between Tauferner and the SPPD that began more than a decade ago set the stage for a more comprehensive program that meets the needs of a growing community dealing with concerns that affect cities across the country regardless of size.
Police departments are addressing an ever-growing number of issues. Coupled with the expectation of digital world response times, this equates to increased responsibility and greater workloads, underscoring the importance of keeping injuries to a minimum and returning injured officers to their posts in a safe and timely manner.
To meet those needs, the SPPD officer wellness program includes the following:
Early access to care for injured officers
Onsite rehabilitation
Access to orthopedic services within 48 hours
Ergonomic Assessments
Fitness center for workouts prior to or following shifts
Daily voluntary stretching program
Strength & conditioning coaching
Recruit conditioning
Return to work testing for injured officers
Post-offer employment testing
Tauferner stresses the importance of each program component to act as a touchstone with Department members, as well as to contribute to a culture of wellness. It’s this mindset that continues to drive the program, putting the Department in the position of knowing exactly when an officer is ready to take care of the community in whatever fashion is needed.
************
Tauferner is back in the hallway, engaging with her team, trading barbs, asking what’s up, offering the highly sought after let’s see what we can do, getting to as many officers as she can. She moves quickly; time is of the essence.
“It’s important to not waste time, because every minute I spend with an officer, that’s less time for them on the road,” she says. “Taxpayers are paying for all of our services, so we need to be mindful of how we can make those dollars go the furthest and be put to the best use.”