These are the first responder situational awareness and decision making issues and opportunities related to crew resource management.
When we are operating under conditions of stress and consequence, coupled with changing conditions and time compression, we can feel a sense of urgency and this can cause us to want to take a shortcut from safety best practices. Length: 29 minutes click the YouTube icon to listen __________________________________________________ […]
Episode 203 | Normalization of Deviance Read More »
The episode explores how relationship bias can impact situational awareness. Length: 29 minutes click the YouTube icon to listen
Episode 202 | Relationship Bias Read More »
In this episode, we explore what happens when faced with unexpected situations and your brain tries to make sense of the unexpected. Length: 33 minutes click the YouTube icon to listen
Episode 201 | When Unexpected Things Happen Read More »
Imagine for a moment that you’re part of a 4-person first-due crew responding on to an apartment fire. On the way to the call the dispatcher announces over the radio that a caller is reporting the fire to be on the first floor of a three-story apartment building. Your company officer tells you that on
Explaining Resistance to Change Read More »
In this episode we discuss the cognitive bias known as herd mentality (or herd behavior). 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 Online Academy. CLICK HERE for details, enrollment
Episode 193 | Herd Mentality Read More »
One of the situational awareness best practices discussed during the Fifty Ways to Kill a First Responder program is the role played by the dispatcher during an emergency incident. As I have discussed this many times with first responders throughout the United States I have come to the conclusion that in some jurisdictions the dispatcher
Dispatchers Role in Situational Awareness Read More »
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?
Creatures of Habit Read More »
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
Confronting a Boss With Flawed Situational Awareness Read More »
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
The Myth of Multitasking and Situational Awareness Read More »
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
Confirmation Bias Impacts Situational Awareness Read More »
