Workload Management Archives - Page 6 of 9 - Situational Awareness Matters!™

Episode 200 | Chesterfield County Interview – Part 3

Leave a Comment / Accountability, Assertiveness, Assumptions, Attention Management, Auditory exclusion, Benchmarks, Building Construction, Cognitive Memory, Command Location, Command Presence, Command Support, Confusion, Decision Making, Distractions and Interruptions, Emotions, Expectations, Experience, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Information overload, Interruptions, Judgment, Meta Awareness, Mindfulness, Miscommunications, Near Miss, Overload, Personnel location, Pre Arrival Lens, Prediction, Pressure, Progress Reports, Safety, SAMatters Radio, Sensory Conflict, Shared Mental Models, Size Up, Staffing, Stress, Task Fixation, Training, Workload Management / Rich Gasaway

This episode is the third (and final) segment of an interview with Chesterfield County Battalion Chief Joy Knicely and Captain Rick Grassel. Length: 50 minutes click the YouTube icon to watch the full VIDEO of this interview! __________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your understanding of situational awareness and high-risk decision making […]

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Episode 198 | Chesterfield County Interview – Part 1

1 Comment / Accountability, Assertiveness, Assumptions, Attention Management, Benchmarks, Building Construction, Cognitive Memory, Command Location, Command Presence, Command Support, Confusion, Decision Making, Distractions and Interruptions, Emotions, Expectations, Experience, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Information overload, Interruptions, Judgment, Meta Awareness, Mindfulness, Miscommunications, Near Miss, Overload, Personnel location, Pre Arrival Lens, Prediction, Pressure, Progress Reports, Safety, SAMatters Radio, Sensory Conflict, Shared Mental Models, Size Up, Staffing, Stress, Task Fixation, Training, Workload Management / Rich Gasaway

This episode is part one of a three-part interview with Chesterfield County Battalion Chief Joy Knicely and Captain Rick Grassel. Length: 46 minutes click the YouTube icon to watch the full VIDEO of this interview! __________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your understanding of situational awareness and high-risk decision making to a

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Dispatchers Role in Situational Awareness

4 Comments / Article, Communications, Crew Resource Management, Decision Making, Equipment, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Information overload, Mayday and RIT, Personnel location, Safety, Situational awareness, Standard Operating Procedures/Guidelines, Teamwork, Training, Workload Management / Rich Gasaway

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

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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 / Rich Gasaway

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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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 / Rich Gasaway

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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Communications Overload Impacts Situational Awareness

4 Comments / Article, Attention Management, Communications, Crew Resource Management, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Safety, Situational awareness, Workload Management / Rich Gasaway

In reading casualty reports you will often see issues related to communications as a contributing factor. Miscommunications, lack of communications or too much radio traffic (to include overloaded radio channels) are often cited. It is the last of these issues I want to address. There is an inherent cognitive consequence from too much communications that

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Episode 180 | Accountability

Leave a Comment / Accountability, Benchmarks, Checklists, Cognitive Memory, Communications, Crew Resource Management, Leadership, Miscommunications, Safety, SAMatters Radio, Staffing, Workload Management, Worksheets / Rich Gasaway

This episode explores how accountability can improve situational awareness. Length: 37 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,

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Begin With The End In Mind

3 Comments / Article, Attention Management, Decision Making, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Leadership, Safety, Situational awareness, Size Up, Training, Workload Management / Rich Gasaway

One of the essential components of well-developed situational awareness is being able to accurately predict the future. This prediction should be made during the initial scene size up and then it should be updated often as the incident progresses. In this segment, the need to begin with the end in mind will be explored and

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Administrative chiefs and emergency responses

9 Comments / Accountability, Article, Crew Resource Management, Decision Making, Ego, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Incompetence, Safety, Situational awareness, Staffing, Standard Operating Procedures/Guidelines, Teamwork, Workload Management / Rich Gasaway

I recently received an email from a firefighter asking for my opinion as to whether or not the administrative chief officers in his department should respond to reported structure fires. My initial response was: “Well, Duh! Yes!” But then I got to thinking about it more. How and when administrative chief officers respond to fires

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A situational awareness paradigm shift

Leave a Comment / Accountability, Article, Attention Management, Complacency, Decision Making, Emotions, Firefighter Situational Awareness, Human Behavior, Human Factors, Incompetence, Safety, Situational awareness, Size Up, Stress, Task Saturation, Tunneled Senses, Workload Management / Rich Gasaway

Paradigm: A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitute a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them . Recent research conducted by Underwriter’s Laboratory (UL) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have revealed a flaw in a long standing paradigm about fire attack. As this blog does not

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