Size Up Archives - Page 9 of 17 - Situational Awareness Matters!™

7 ways to accelerate learning (Episode 243)

Leave a Comment / Automatic Action, Checklists, Close Call, Cognitive Memory, Competency, Decision Making, Expectations, Goals, Habits, Intuition, Judgment, Line of Duty Death, Long-Term Memory, Mental Models, Muscle Memory, Neuroscience, Pattern Matching, Prediction, SAMatters Radio, Size Up, Training, Worksheets / Rich Gasaway

This episode explores 7 ways to accelerate your knowledge acquisition through purposeful development of cognitive scripts. Length: 28 minutes Click the YouTube icon to watch the full VIDEO __________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your understanding of situational awareness and high-risk decision making to a higher level, check out the Situational […]

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Situational Awareness in Hoarder Homes – Guest Post

5 Comments / Article, Building Construction, Decision Making, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Human Behavior, Human Factors, Safety, Situational awareness, Size Up, Stress / Rich Gasaway

Firefighter-Paramedic Ryan Pennington with the Charleston (WV) Fire Department has been conducting extensive research on the epidemic problem of emergencies in hoarder homes. Emergencies including everything from fires to EMS calls to animal hoarding issues – the whole gamut. Ryan has also developed a knock-out program on hoarder home fires. If your jurisdiction is having

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Twelve Ways to Situational Awareness

6 Comments / Article, Communications, Complacency, Culture, Decision Making, Gasaway Consulting Group, Human Factors, Incompetence, Information overload, Safety, Situational awareness, Situational Readiness, Size Up, Staffing, Stress, Teamwork, Training, Workload Management / Rich Gasaway

Ho, Ho, Ho. Merry Christmas everyone! With Thanksgiving day in the past, it is officially the Christmas season! I know everyone’s feeling particularly festive this time of year and I have caught the Christmas spirit in a very situational awareness sort of way. Surely you’ve heard of the “Twelve Days of Christmas.” -You know –

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Positive and Negative Clues and Cues

Leave a Comment / Article, Decision Making, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Safety, Situational awareness, Size Up / Rich Gasaway

As we train our leaders to improve situational awareness it is important the lessons include a list of both positive and negative clues and cues. In the context of developing situational awareness, positive and negative does not mean good and bad. Rather, positive and negative means present and absent. Let me explain.

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Mission Myopia: A situational awareness barrier

2 Comments / Article, Attention Management, Decision Making, Distractions and Interruptions, Ego, Human Factors, Meta Awareness, Multitasking, Risk Assessment, Safety, Size Up, Task Saturation, Tunneled Senses / Rich Gasaway

The primary mission in all emergency situations is to save lives and property. In some agencies when a new member is inducted into the organization they take an oath of office that includes pledging their commitment to this mission. The mission is an important – even noble – calling. But what happens when a responder

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Episode 234 | The Dirty Dozen – Killer Situational Awareness Barriers

Leave a Comment / Auditory exclusion, Cognitive Memory, Communications, Complacency, Confabulation, Confusion, Decision Making, Distractions and Interruptions, Expectations, Experience, Fear, Gut Feeling, Habits, Hallucinations, Human Behavior, Human Error, Human Factors, Hyper Vigilance, Information overload, Intuition, Judgment, Long-Term Memory, Meta Awareness, Miscommunications, Mission, Mission Myopia, Multitasking, Muscle Memory, Overload, Overwhelm, Perception, Perception Of Reality, Prediction, Pressure, Radios, Repetition, Risk Assessment, Safety, SAMatters Radio, Selective Listening, Sensory Conflict, Shared Mental Models, Short Term Memory, Situational awareness, Size Up, Stress, Tacit Knowledge, Task Fixation, Tunnel Vision, Tunneled Senses, Under Confident, understaffing, Vigilance, Workload Management, Worksheets / Rich Gasaway

This episode discusses some of the most challenging barriers to situational awareness while working in high-risk, high-consequence environments. This is part 2 so if you missed part 1 – Episode 233 – be sure to check it out first and that will help you understand the challenges we are going to discuss here. Length: 36

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Episode 233 | The Process for Developing Situational Awareness

Leave a Comment / Auditory exclusion, Cognitive Memory, Communications, Complacency, Confabulation, Confusion, Decision Making, Distractions and Interruptions, Expectations, Experience, Fear, Gut Feeling, Habits, Hallucinations, Human Behavior, Human Error, Human Factors, Hyper Vigilance, Information overload, Intuition, Judgment, Long-Term Memory, Meta Awareness, Miscommunications, Mission, Mission Myopia, Multitasking, Muscle Memory, Overload, Overwhelm, Perception, Perception Of Reality, Prediction, Pressure, Radios, Repetition, Risk Assessment, Routines, Safety, SAMatters Radio, Selective Listening, Sensory Conflict, Shared Mental Models, Short Term Memory, Situational awareness, Size Up, Stress, Tacit Knowledge, Task Fixation, Tunnel Vision, Tunneled Senses, Under Confident, Vigilance, Workload Management, Worksheets / Rich Gasaway

The episode discusses the process for developing and maintaining situational awareness. We will discuss the foundation, walls and roof of the SA development process. This is part 1 of a 2-part episode. Length: 36 minutes Click the YouTube icon to watch the full VIDEO __________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking

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Episode 232 | Kevin LaChapelle Interview Part 2

Leave a Comment / Assumptions, Cognitive Memory, Communications, Confabulation, Confusion, Decision Making, Emotions, Expectations, Hallucinations, Judgment, Near Miss, Neuroscience, Over Confident, Perception, Perception Of Reality, Pre Arrival Lens, Repetition, Risk, Risk Assessment, Safety, SAMatters Radio, Size Up / Rich Gasaway

This episode is part 2 of a 2-part interview with Fire Chief Kevin LaChapelle from the Franklin, New Hampshire Fire Department sharing the details of mayday event that occurred in Franklin. Length: 37 minutes Click the YouTube icon to watch the full VIDEO __________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your

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Episode 231 | Kevin LaChapelle Interview Part 1

Leave a Comment / Accountability, Assumptions, Attention Management, Auditory exclusion, Automatic Action, Building Construction, Close Call, Command Location, Command Presence, Command Support, Communications, Crew Resource Management, Culture, Decision Making, Denial, Disoriented, Emotions, Expectations, Experience, Fatigue, Fear, Habits, Mayday, Mindfulness, Miscommunications, Mission, Personnel location, Pre Arrival Lens, Prediction, Progress Reports, Radios, Response Time Delays, SAMatters Radio, Size Up, Staffing, Standard Operating Procedures/Guidelines, Stress, Teamwork, understaffing / Rich Gasaway

This episode is part 1 of a 2-part interview with Fire Chief Kevin LaChapelle from the Franklin, New Hampshire Fire Department sharing the details of mayday event that occurred in Franklin. Length: 60 minutes Click the YouTube icon to watch the full VIDEO __________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your

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Episode 230 | Confabulated Reality

Leave a Comment / Assumptions, Cognitive Memory, Communications, Confabulation, Confusion, Decision Making, Emotions, Expectations, Hallucinations, Judgment, Neuroscience, Over Confident, Perception, Perception Of Reality, Preoccupation, Repetition, Risk, Risk Assessment, Safety, SAMatters Radio, Size Up / Rich Gasaway

This episode discusses what confabulation is and how our brains can make up its own reality, which can include eliminating factual information and making up untruthful information. Length: 21 minutes Click the YouTube icon to watch the full VIDEO __________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your understanding of situational awareness

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