One of the primary purposes of a Personnel Accountability Report (PAR) is to ensure the incident commander and safety officer know where crews are and that all members are accounted for. In the event of a rapid change in conditions or an unforeseen turn of events, the PAR can be used to quickly account for […]
Physical Condition Assessments Improve Situational Awareness Read More »
Your highest level of situational awareness is formed when you are able to make accurate predictions about future events. In science, we call this projection and it simply means you are able to predict, or project, future events. This is accomplished through mental models you develop that are founded in your training and experience. But
Time to Task Completion is Critical for Situational Awareness Read More »
It’s an odd term – normalization of deviance. But the term and the premise behind the term provides a valuable explanation as to some of the behaviors we observe in the first responder world. Defining the term Normalization: To make normal; to make an established standard. Deviance: Departing from the norm; performing
The Normalization of Deviance Read More »
Understaffing can have a big impact on first responder safety. We all know that. But it can also have a huge impact on first responder situational awareness… more than I ever imagined. I have experienced understaffing issues many times throughout my career but I never gave much thought to how my situational awareness was being
Understaffing Impacts Situational Awareness Read More »
There are four levels of progression a person goes through in the development of competence. The pathway begins with a complete unawareness of how little a person knows and progresses to a complete unawareness of how much a person knows. There is a dangerous cognitive phenomenon that can occur along this continuum known as the
The Overconfident Incompetent Read More »
During a “Firefighter Safety Mistakes & Best Practices program recently, I was approached at the break by a training officer who shared with me how he was making the very mistakes I was talking about in class. It turns out, he has been training his firefighters to fail. He described my message as “A wake-up
Training For Failure Will Impact Decision Making and Situational Awareness Read More »
A subscriber to the Situational Awareness Matters newsletter sent me a photograph of an emergency incident scene that caused me to reflect on a very important situational awareness lesson. This lesson, unfortunately, is often overlooked and is often implicated as a contributing factor to near-miss and casualty events. Let’s spend a little time examining workload
The Two Headed Incident Commander Read More »
Many first responder training programs use simulation in the development of decision-making competencies. Simulation exercises help develop skills in setting strategy and tactics, in applying policies and procedures and in developing critical thinking skills. How can simulations be used in the development of situational awareness skills? The answer lies, in part, in understanding what situational
Using the Simulation Environment to Improve Situational Awareness Read More »
I am a big advocate of departments having standardized procedures to guide operations as tools to help develop and maintain situational awareness. I don’t really care if you call them Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) or Standard Operating Guidelines (SOGs). The important thing is you have a set of commonly understood Standards that guide performance. Standards
Standards Can Harm Decision Making Under Stress Read More »
This contribution comes to Situational Awareness Matters by way of a great LinkedIn connection I made recently with Tim Greene, CEO of EMS Options LLC. I found out about Tim and his mission while surfing his bio on LinkedIn. (Yes, I am among the few who actually read about the people I get connected with
Situational Readiness of the Personal Variety Read More »
