Rich Gasaway

Richard B. Gasaway served 33 years on the front lines as a firefighter, EMT-Paramedic and fire chief. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree while studying how individuals, teams and organizations develop and maintain situational awareness and make decisions in high stress, high consequence, time compressed environments. Dr. Gasaway is widely considered to be one of the nation's leading authorities on first responder situational awareness and decision making. His material has been featured and referenced in more than 400 book chapters, research projects, journal articles, podcasts, webinars and videos. His research and passion to improve workplace safety through improved situational awareness is unrivaled. Dr. Gasaway's leadership and safety programs have been presented to more than 42,000 first responders, emergency managers, medical providers, military personnel, aviation employees, industrial workers and business leaders throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Episode 190 | Interview with Norfolk Assistant Fire Chief John DiBacco – Part 1

Leave a Comment / Accountability, Communications, Decision Making, Experience, Goals, Leadership, Mission, Risk Assessment, SAMatters Radio, Shared Mental Models, Standard Operating Procedures/Guidelines, Training /

Episode 190 is Part 1 of a 2-part interview with Norfolk Assistant Fire Chief John DiBacco talking about the after-action review process used by Norfolk Fire to learn lessons from significant incidents.   Length: 36 minutes click the YouTube icon to listen         __________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your understanding of […]

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Creatures of Habit

1 Comment / Article, Complacency, Crew Resource Management, Culture, Decision Making, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Neuroscience, Repetition, Safety, Situational awareness, Stress, Workload Management /

Perhaps you’ve heard it said that we are creatures of habit. The more we do something over and over again, the more likely that behavior will be turned into a habit. But what happens in the mystical world of the brain when a behavior becomes a habit? Is your behavior under stress predictable? Rational? Understandable?

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Episode 189 | Communications Overload

Leave a Comment / Attention Management, Auditory exclusion, Cognitive Memory, Communications, Information overload, Mayday, Miscommunications, Overload, Radios, SAMatters Radio, Selective Listening /

This episode discusses the cognitive overload that can occur when there is too much verbal information to process.  Length: 31 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

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Confronting a Boss With Flawed Situational Awareness

1 Comment / Accountability, Article, Communications, Crew Resource Management, Culture, Ego, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Human Behavior, Leadership, Safety, Situational awareness, Standard Operating Procedures/Guidelines, Teamwork /

  I recently read a post on social media where a firefighter said at an incident scene that he doesn’t worry about his situational awareness. That’s what he has an officer for. Further, he didn’t worry about having situational awareness about the larger incident scene, that’s what he has an incident commander for. I could

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Episode 188 | When the puzzle pieces don’t fit

Leave a Comment / Assumptions, Attention Management, Automatic Action, Command Presence, Complacency, Confusion, Decision Making, Denial, Expectations, Gut Feeling, Illness, Intuition, Meta Awareness, Mission Myopia, Near Miss, Personnel location, Pre Arrival Lens, Routines, Safety, SAMatters Radio, Task Fixation, Teamwork, Vigilance /

This episode discusses the confusion that can occur when the information you gather during size-up do not fit your expectations of what you thought you were going to see or hear. Length: 35 minutes click the YouTube icon to listen         _____________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your understanding of situational awareness

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The Myth of Multitasking and Situational Awareness

Leave a Comment / Article, Attention Management, Crew Resource Management, Decision Making, Distractions and Interruptions, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Human Behavior, Human Factors, Neuroscience, Repetition, Safety, Situational awareness, Workload Management, Worksheets /

Think you’re good at multitasking? If so, you are just fooling yourself. Or, perhaps more aptly stated, your brain is fooling you. Multitasking is simply a way for us to be tricked into doing a whole bunch of things, poorly, all at the same time. When it comes to managing attention, the human brain cannot

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Episode 187 | Standards May Harm Decision Making

Leave a Comment / Decision Making, Expectations, Judgment, SAMatters Radio, Training /

  This episode discusses how training employees to written standards may actually harm decision making. Length: 27 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 Academy.

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Confirmation Bias Impacts Situational Awareness

1 Comment / Article, Crew Resource Management, Decision Making, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Human Factors, Safety, Situational awareness, Size Up /

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

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Episode 186 | You Can’t Handle the Truth

Leave a Comment / Cognitive Memory, Confabulation, Confusion, Decision Making, Human Behavior, Human Factors, Information overload, Miscommunications, Overload, Progress Reports, Safety, SAMatters Radio, Stress /

  This episode discusses some of the strange consequences of stress, including how employees may say untruthful things without knowing it. Length: 36 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

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Confabulation: It Sounds Better Than Lying

5 Comments / Accountability, Article, Attention Management, Communications, Confabulation, Crew Resource Management, Decision Making, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Human Behavior, Neuroscience, Safety, Situational awareness /

Confabulation may sound better than lying, but it’s no less dangerous. One of the most amazing demonstrations I do during my situational awareness programs is to show how a person, when placed under stress, will lie. Only in the world of neuroscience, we don’t call it lying, we call it confabulation. You won’t do it

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