situational awareness

Mission Myopia: A situational awareness barrier

Leave a Comment / Attention Management, Complacency, Crew Resource Management, Decision Making, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Human Factors, Repetition, Risk Assessment, Safety, Simulation, Situational awareness, Size Up, Stress, Tacit Knowledge, Training, Tunneled Senses /

Every emergency scene operation should begin with determining the mission (sometimes called strategy) and setting task-level goals (sometimes called tactics). Strategy and tactics establish what is to be done and how it is to be done. For example, at a structure fire, arriving responders are trained to conduct search and rescue operations and to extinguish

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Tacit knowledge and situational awareness

2 Comments / Attention Management, Competency, Decision Making, Human Factors, Neuroscience, Repetition, Safety, Situational awareness, Tacit Knowledge /

While conducting research on how decisions are made during high consequence events I came across a term I’d never heard before – “tacit knowledge.” Once I learned what it was it quickly became evident that I possessed it… and I didn’t know it. In fact, every first responder who has developed expert-level knowledge and skills

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Station Alerting Noise Can Impact Situational Awareness

Leave a Comment / Auditory exclusion, Emotions, Fear, Human Behavior, Human Factors, Safety, Situational awareness, Technology, Tunneled Senses /

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

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Seeing the bad things coming in time to change the outcome

2 Comments / Complacency, Decision Making, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Personal Protective Equipment, Personnel location, Risk Assessment, Safety, Situational awareness, Size Up, Tunneled Senses /

The mission of Situational Awareness Matters! is “Helping responders see the bad things coming… in time to change the outcome.”  That is often easier said than done. In fact, the lessons that sharpen our situational awareness often comes after the fact. It is very easy to see the bad things that were coming when we

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Working Command and Situational Awareness

6 Comments / Accountability, Attention Management, Communications, Crew Resource Management, Culture, Decision Making, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Safety, Situational awareness, Size Up, Stress, Teamwork, Workload Management /

I seem to be getting asked a lot lately about what the first arriving company officer should do at a working structure fire. Specifically, the debate revolves around two basic premise. Should the first arriving company officer assume a fixed command position outside the structure and coordinate the activities of incoming units? Or, should the

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Situational Awareness Conference Call

Leave a Comment / Firefighter Situational Awareness, Gasaway Consulting Group, Questions & Answers, Safety, Situational awareness, Training /

A free Situational Awareness conference call was held  on Tuesday, June 19, 2012 (during International Fire/EMS Safety & Health Week). Thank you to Tiger Schmittendorf (Erie County, New York), Ryan Pennington (Charleston, West Virginia) and Will Ball (Williamsport, Maryland) for being my guests panelists as we took caller questions and discussed topics that included:

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