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Expectations can Impact Situational Awareness
Towering Inferno… Backdraft… Ladder 49… Emergency… Adam 12… Dragnet… Rescue Me… Chicago Fire. Love them or hate them, movies and television influence perceptions and create expectations three ways:
First, they influence citizen perceptions of emergency service providers and create certain performance expectations.Second, they influence first responders’ perceptions of themselves and create certain expectations of themselves. Finally, they influence first responders’ perceptions of what those first responders THINK the citizens expect of them.
All of these expectations create stress, can lead to task fixation, can contribute to tunnel vision and can cause a host of situational awareness problems.
Posted in Accountability, Competency, Culture, Decision Making, Ego and Self-Esteem, Emotions, Fear, firefighter situational awareness, human factors, Safety, Situational awareness, Stress
Tagged consequence, decision making, decision making under stress, embarrassment, failure, fear, fire service leadership, firefighter safety, firefighter situational awareness, first responder expectations, situational awareness for emergency response
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Confirmation Bias Impacts Situational Awareness
The foundation of situational awareness is capturing clues and cues in your environment – what some would call “paying attention” - and then making sense of those clues and cues – what some would call “understanding” – and then making projections of future events – what some would call “prediction.” One of the challenges in the formation of situational awareness that can arise during the “understanding” phase is Confirmation Bias.
Posted in Crew Resource Management, Decision Making, firefighter situational awareness, human factors, Safety, Situational awareness, size-up
Tagged cognitive bias, confirmation bias, decision making under stress, firefighter rescue, firefighter safety, firefighter situational awareness, flashover, flawed situational awareness, incident command, information management, situational awareness
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Radio Traffic Can Improve or Destroy Situational Awareness
When it comes to first responder radio traffic I am reminded of the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
You may recall that in the story Goldilocks samples three bowls of porridge. One is too hot. One is too cold. And the third is just right.
This lesson applies directly to first responder situational awareness and the role radio communications plays in helping to develop and maintain SA. Let’s explore radio traffic.
Posted in Attention Management, Auditory exclusion, Communications, Complacency, Decision Making, Distractions and Interruptions, Emotions, Fear, firefighter situational awareness, human factors, Information overload, Neuroscience, Safety, Situational awareness, Stress, Training, Tunneled Senses
Tagged decision making, dispatch, emergency management, EMT, fire, fire command, fire command training, fire training, firefighter safety, firefighter situational awareness, fireground command, fireground command decision making, fireground commander, fireground safety, haz-mat, hazardous materials, officer safety, paramedic, patient care, police officer safety, public safety, radio communications, rescue, responder safety, safety, Situational awareness matters, tactical decision making, technical rescue
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Station Alerting Noise Can Impact Situational Awareness
Noise can erode situational awareness in many ways. Loud noises, soft noises, lots of noise, odd noises, familiar noises, annoying noises… all noise can present challenges.
In this article, I want to explore some of the challenges first responders face in a noisy environment and I’d like to share my personal example of how noise impacted my situational awareness.
Posted in Auditory exclusion, Emotions, Fear, Human Behavior, human factors, Safety, Situational awareness, Technology, Tunneled Senses
Tagged decision making, firefighter situational awareness, fireground command, mental models, noise, sense making, situational awareness, station alerting systems
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Developing Situational Awareness in Novice Responders
One of the most frequent questions I get asked during the Mental Management of Emergencies and Fifty Ways to Kill a First Responder programs is: How can a novice responder develop expert knowledge when the number of fires are going down? It’s a great question and a great concern because so much of situational awareness and making good decisions in high stress, high consequence environments hinges on having stored expert knowledge.
Is there any hope for the novice responder? Can he or she develop and maintain situational awareness and make good decisions with limited real-life experience? The answer is: There may be a solution and it is one rooted in brain science. Let’s explore how the brain learns and recalls information that aids in the decision making process.
Posted in Competency, Decision Making, Emotions, firefighter situational awareness, Human Behavior, Neuroscience, Repetition, Safety, Simulation, Situational awareness, Training
Tagged accelerating expertise, command competence, competency progression, conscious competence, conscious incompetence, decision making, decision making under stress, dispatch, emergency management, EMT, expertise, fire, fire command, fire command training, fire training, firefighter safety, firefighter situational awareness, fireground command, fireground command decision making, fireground commander, fireground safety, haz-mat, hazardous materials, line of duty death, novice decision makers, officer safety, paramedic, patient care, police officer safety, public safety, rescue, responder safety, safety, situational awareness, Situational awareness matters, tactical decision making, technical rescue, unconscious competence, unconscious incompetence
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Bravado: A Barrier to Situational Awareness
I recently sent out a message across my social media networks (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) about bravado being a barrier to situational awareness. The message, in case you missed it, read:
Bravado: The purposeful ignorance of critical signs of danger coupled with a sense of invincibility. A barrier to situational awareness.
First responders sometimes confuse bravery with bravado and they are two distinctly different concepts. Let’s explore each and discuss how they are linked to situational awareness.
Posted in Accountability, Crew Resource Management, Culture, Decision Making, Ego and Self-Esteem, Emotions, Fear, firefighter situational awareness, Human Behavior, human factors, Safety, Situational awareness, Situational Readiness, Teamwork, Training
Tagged bravado, bravery, decision making, decision making under stress, dispatch, emergency management, EMT, fire, fire command, fire command training, fire training, firefighter safety, firefighter situational awareness, fireground command, fireground command decision making, fireground commander, fireground safety, haz-mat, hazardous materials, line of duty death, officer safety, paramedic, patient care, police officer safety, public safety, rescue, responder safety, risk management, safety, situational awareness, Situational awareness matters, tactical decision making, technical rescue
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Situational Awareness: Think Past, Present & Future
Flawed situational awareness (SA) is one of the leading contributing factors to first responder near-miss and casualty events. In fact, it is nearly impossible to find a line-of-duty death investigation report that does not implicate flawed SA, or one of the barriers that flaw SA, as contributing to the tragedy. As often as flawed SA is implicated it almost seems tragic how little first responders actually know about how to develop and maintain it, how they lose it, and how they regain it if they do lose it.
This article focuses some aspects of the first two, developing and maintaining SA. I want to share a concept that might sound strangely familiar if you’ve ever seen or read Charles Dickens’ classic, Christmas Story, as we discuss: Situational Awareness: Past, Present, and Future.
Using the simulation environment to improve situational awareness
Many first responder training programs use simulation in the development of decision making competencies. Simulation exercises help develop skills in setting strategy and tactics, in applying policies and procedures and in developing critical thinking skills. But how can simulations be used in the development of situational awareness skills?
The answer lies, in part, in understanding what situational awareness is and how it is developed. However, and equally important, is understanding how situational awareness is lost in the context of the environment first responders work in. It is this component of situational awareness, and it’s application to simulations, that I want to discuss here.
Posted in Communications, Crew Resource Management, Decision Making, Human Behavior, human factors, Information overload, Mental Models, Neuroscience, Safety, Simulation, Situational awareness, Stress, Technology, Training, Workload Management
Tagged decision making, decision making under stress, fire service leadership, firefighter safety, firefighter situational awareness, high reliability organizations, leadership, mental models, mindfulness, problem solving, resiliency, resilient problem solving, safety, sense making, Simulation, situational awareness, Situational awareness matters, staffing, teamwork, training
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Firefighting: It’s a whole new ballgame
There is little doubt the recent recession has had a significant impact on the nation’s fire service. Hardly a day goes by where there’s not some news about an organization that had downsized, rightsized or capsized. There are all kinds of terms being attached to what is happening.
One I heard recently was The New Normal. This term seems to be fitting as the fire service faces changes unlike anything most have experienced and it’s likely to stay this way for a very long time.
Posted in Accountability, Complacency, Crew Resource Management, Culture, Decision Making, Emotions, Fear, Human Behavior, Leadership, Mayday and RIT, Personnel location, Risk Assessment, Safety, Situational awareness, Situational Readiness, Staffing, Standard Operating Procedures/Guidelines, Stress, Teamwork, Training, Workload Management
Tagged decision making, decision making under stress, fire service leadership, firefighter safety, firefighter situational awareness, high reliability organizations, leadership, organizational culture, problem solving, resiliency, resilient problem solving, safety, situational awareness, staffing, teamwork, training
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