One of the things I am thankful for in life (among many) is safe air travel. A lot of time, effort and money is spent to ensure flight crews develop and maintain strong situational awareness. The chances of getting killed in a commercial airline accident while traveling with one of the top 20 carriers is […]
The Facilitated Debrief: A Lesson From Aviation Read More »
The training practices used in many communities are setting up emergency response personnel for failure and flawed situational awareness. The sad part is most don’t even realize they’re doing it. When casualties occur, so do investigations. The investigations result in recommendations for how to prevent future casualty events. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and
We Must Stop The Insanity: Part 1 Read More »
In this episode, we discuss five best practices for managing mental workload under stressful working conditions. Length: 26 minutes click the YouTube icon to listen _____________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your understanding of situational awareness and high-risk decision making to a higher level, check out the Situational Awareness Matters Online
Episode 131 | Best practices for managing mental workload Read More »
Oftentimes when I am talking with first responders about the role of situational awareness and casualty incidents, especially the ones that have recently occurred, they share with me their opinions and frustrations about the performance of the responders and the decisions made by command staff. If I have learned anything, it’s first responders are opinionated
Stop Judging to Improve Situational Awareness Read More »
During an open conference call recently, I had the opportunity to discuss situational awareness challenges and opportunities (which, by the way… was really enjoyable) I had a chief officer from Wisconsin (thanks Lance) ask a question about company officer priorities on sizing up a residential dwelling fire. It’s a question I get asked often and have built
Four Size-up Priorities to Improve Situational Awareness Read More »
Part of the process to develop and maintain situational awareness at an emergency scene is having the ability to predict the future of the event. It’s called projection and it’s the highest level of situational awareness. [tweet this] To be good at projecting the future, it is necessary to have expectations about the future events.
Safety Trumps Self-Esteem In Good Decision Making Read More »
In this episode, I interview Birmingham Assistant Fire Chief Floyd (Buddy) Wilks, Jr. who served as the incident commander during a mayday at a residential dwelling fire. Length: 68 minutes click the YouTube icon to listen _____________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your understanding of situational awareness and high-risk decision making to
Episode126 | Interview with Birmingham Assistant Fire Chief Floyd (Buddy) Wilks, Jr. Read More »
The decision to be defensive or to transition tactics from offensive to defensive at a structure fire requires strong situational awareness [tweet this] and it may be one of the hardest decisions a commander can make. The difficulty with this decision is not rooted in tactical shortcomings. The problem more fundamental.
Defensive Decision Making Read More »
As public safety providers, we could make a fundamental improvement in developing situational awareness by looking at how we train responders. [tweet this] There are some valuable lessons from brain science that can help you improve the design of your program. One is called context dependent learning. It has been validated through numerous studies and
Context Dependent Learning Read More »
You’re a firefighter assigned to a roof job. It’s a flat metal roof and there’s a lot of water on it. (Set aside for a moment all your judgement about why you’re on the roof in the first place). Your situational awareness is strong and you’re getting a gut feeling that’s causing you concern for
The Five Step Assertive Statement Process Read More »
