Search
Close this search box.

Search Results for: Personal Awareness

EMDR Treatment for First Responders: Interview with Dr. Deborah Korn – 393

  This episode is provides first responders a look into a treatment option for Post Traumatic Event Brain Injuries called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).  Dr. Deborah Korn, PsyD, an internationally renowned pioneer and expert in EMDR Therapy and author of the book Every Memory Deserves Respect: EMDR the Proven Trauma Therapy with the […]

EMDR Treatment for First Responders: Interview with Dr. Deborah Korn – 393 Read More »

Privacy Policy

Updated January 16, 2023 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND ACCEPTANCE OF TERMS Situational Awareness Matters! is a division of the Gasaway Consulting Group, LLC (the “Company”). Our company is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Statement sets forth our current privacy practices with regard to the information we collect when you or your computer interact with our

Privacy Policy Read More »

The Overconfident Incompetent – SAM 351

In this episode discusses the process for competency development and introduces the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a cognitive bias whereby unskilled people suffer from the illusion of having superior skills and knowledge.   Description         This discussion includes the four steps in the progression of competency: Step 1: Unconscious incompetence – being unaware of what you do

The Overconfident Incompetent – SAM 351 Read More »

Tracking of Personnel

Accountability: A critically important component of emergency scene safety when personnel operates in a hazardous environment. From the perspective of situational awareness, accountability plays several roles. The obvious role is personnel accountability facilitates the rapid deployment of rescue teams if something goes awry. Command knows the crew sizes and where they are operating and can

Tracking of Personnel Read More »

Commanders in Turnout Gear

I recently read, with great interest, a very long thread on Facebook about whether or not an incident commander should wear turnout gear at a fire scene. As my focus and passion is improving first responder situational awareness, I would like to address this issue from that perspective. The feedback on Facebook was, as expected,

Commanders in Turnout Gear Read More »

A Mental Health Mayday. The Laverne Friesen Story – Part 2 (Episode 302)

Today’s episode is Part 2 of my 2-part interview with Laverne Friesen, a first responder who is confronting the stigma of mental illness head-on as he shares his first-hand account of how work-related stress was leading him down a dark path toward suicide.  He shares intimate details of what that experience was like, how it

A Mental Health Mayday. The Laverne Friesen Story – Part 2 (Episode 302) Read More »

A Mental Health Mayday. The Laverne Friesen Story – Part 1 (Episode 301)

Today’s episode is Part 1 of my 2-part interview with Laverne Friesen, a first responder who is confronting the stigma of mental illness head-on as he shares his first-hand account of how work-related stress was leading him down a dark path toward suicide.  He shares intimate details of what that experience was like, how it

A Mental Health Mayday. The Laverne Friesen Story – Part 1 (Episode 301) Read More »

Three types of stress

In this article, we discuss three types of stress: Acute stress, episodic acute stress, and chronic stress. First responders can, and often do, experience all three. Stress can impact firefighter situational awareness and, equally concerning, stress can have devastating long-term impacts. As I was writing this article I recalled various times during my thirty years

Three types of stress Read More »

Weapons of Mass Distraction

The foundation for developing situational awareness is perception – using your senses to gather information about what is happening around you. In lay terms, we call it paying attention. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to develop strong situational awareness if you are not paying attention to what is happening around you. For better

Weapons of Mass Distraction Read More »

The Overconfident Incompetent

There are four levels of progression a person goes through in the development of competence. The pathway begins with a complete unawareness of how little a person knows and progresses to a complete unawareness of how much a person knows. There is a dangerous cognitive phenomenon that can occur along this continuum known as the

The Overconfident Incompetent Read More »