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Tacit knowledge is that collection of life's experiences, education and training that resides outside conscious awareness. It's the knowledge one possesses that helps tap into intuition, a vital component to making high-stress, high-consequence, and rapid decisions.
Our sponsor:
Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com
Intro music
Safety Dance (1982)
Men Without Hats
GMC - Virgin Records
Licensed by BMI Music
Situational Awareness Matters! website
www.SAMatters.com
Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System
http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/
Contact Rich Gasaway
www.RichGasaway.com
612-548-4424
If we're being honest with ourselves, we know that not all team members are created equal. It is a situational awareness best practice to know the strengths (and weaknesses) of your team before engaging in high-risk, high-consequence activities.
Our sponsor:
Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com
Intro music
Safety Dance (1982)
Men Without Hats
GMC - Virgin Records
Licensed by BMI Music
Situational Awareness Matters! website
www.SAMatters.com
Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System
http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/
Contact Rich Gasaway
www.RichGasaway.com
Because individuals and teams frequently operate in environments where there are multiple auditory inputs (e.g., radio traffic, face-to-face communications, ambient sounds, etc.) they are often forced to prioritize what they listen to (or don't listen to). This can cause issues with situational awareness.
Our sponsor:
Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com
Intro music
Safety Dance (1982)
Men Without Hats
GMC - Virgin Records
Licensed by BMI Music
Situational Awareness Matters! website
www.SAMatters.com
Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System
http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/
Contact Rich Gasaway
www.RichGasaway.com
612-548-4424
Arguably, to accomplish a mission, it would be very beneficial to have a shared set of goals that everyone understands and everyone is working on together in a unified way to accomplish. Shared goals can contribute to shared situational awareness – a common understanding of what is happening and what the plan of action entails – Answering questions like: What is being done and why? What is the strategy and why? What is each person's role? How are the roles interconnected? It is easier to function as a team when the goals are well established and well communicated. But what happens when they're not?
Our sponsor:
Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com
Intro music
Safety Dance (1982)
Men Without Hats
GMC - Virgin Records
Licensed by BMI Music
Situational Awareness Matters! website
www.SAMatters.com
Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System
http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/
Contact Rich Gasaway
www.RichGasaway.com
612-548-4424
Anyone who's been frustrated knows it can consume a lot of your mental energy and thinking space. This can significantly impact your situational awareness. In fact, depending on the level of frustration, your brain can be hijacked by all-consuming thoughts about what is causing your angst. While operating in a high-risk, high-stress environment, frustration may draw your attention away from perceiving or understanding critical inputs that form awareness.
Our sponsor:
Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com
Intro music
Safety Dance (1982)
Men Without Hats
GMC - Virgin Records
Licensed by BMI Music
Situational Awareness Matters! website
www.SAMatters.com
Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System
http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/
Contact Rich Gasaway
www.RichGasaway.com
612-548-4424
We make assumptions every day. Some of them are accurate. Others are not. Assumptions occur when there is an absence of complete information. Such is the case at just about every high-risk, high-consequence event you must deal with. Let's explore how we make assumptions.
An assumption is a mental guess or estimate. In the absence of complete information, you are forced to fill in the missing information with your best guess. This guess is based on your collective knowledge (training, experience and an assessment of the current situation).
The more training and experience you have and the better your assessment of the current situation, the more likely your assumptions are to be accurate (or close to accurate). Conversely, the less training and experience you have, the less likely your assumptions are to be accurate.
Our sponsor:
Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com
Intro music
Safety Dance (1982)
Men Without Hats
GMC - Virgin Records
Licensed by BMI Music
Situational Awareness Matters! website
www.SAMatters.com
Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System
http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/
Contact Rich Gasaway
www.RichGasaway.com
612-548-4424
We rationalize that because we are operating in conditions of stress and consequence, with urgency and a feeling of pressure to perform quickly, we can take shortcuts to our best practices.
Some even go as far as to rationalize that we SHOULD shortcut our safety best practices when faced with conditions that are urgent. This episode explores how shortcuts, rewarded with successful outcomes can lead to normalization of deviance.
Our sponsor:
Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com
Intro music
Safety Dance (1982)
Men Without Hats
GMC - Virgin Records
Licensed by BMI Music
Situational Awareness Matters! website
www.SAMatters.com
Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System
http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/
Contact Rich Gasaway
www.RichGasaway.com
612-548-4424
The premise behind relationship bias is that we tend to be attracted toward (and like) people whom we know well and to whom we know share similar interests. The stronger our relationship with another person, the more likely we are to believe them when they tell us something. The weaker the relationship, the less likely we are to believe the other person.
Our sponsor:
Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com
Intro music
Safety Dance (1982)
Men Without Hats
GMC - Virgin Records
Licensed by BMI Music
Situational Awareness Matters! website
www.SAMatters.com
Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System
http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/
Contact Rich Gasaway
www.RichGasaway.com
612-548-4424
When everything goes as planned, your expectations are met and situational awareness is easily formed and sustained. However, sometimes your expectations are violated. In other words, your beautifully constructed mental model of the outcomes of an event are flawed. When this happens, your brain can become overwhelmed with confusion. It can also lead to anger and frustration because your brain doesn't like to be wrong. This, in turn, can impact your situational awareness.
Our sponsor:
Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com
Intro music
Safety Dance (1982)
Men Without Hats
GMC - Virgin Records
Licensed by BMI Music
Situational Awareness Matters! website
www.SAMatters.com
Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System
http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/
Contact Rich Gasaway
www.RichGasaway.com
612-548-4424
In the early morning hours of January 17, 2016, Chesterfield County Fire & EMS responded to a residential fire on Wicklow Lane that would result in fire civilian fire fatalities, including 2 children. This three-part interview chronicles the event, the situational awareness challenges and the lessons learned from the first-in captain and the first arriving battalion chief.
See the FULL interview on YouTube at:
https://youtu.be/M0KHehMIQXc
Our sponsor:
Midwest Fire MidwestFire.com
Intro music
Safety Dance (1982)
Men Without Hats
GMC - Virgin Records
Licensed by BMI Music
Situational Awareness Matters! website
www.SAMatters.com
Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System
http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/
Contact Rich Gasaway
www.RichGasaway.com
612-548-4424
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