May 16, 2014
On this episode we’ll talk about…
1.Positive and negative clues and cues that form situational awareness.
2.We will share a near-miss event where a first responder was nearly run over by a fire department command vehicle.
3.And we will address a dilemma where a listener shares his concern about his department training officer and the seemingly lack of interest in conducting mayday and rapid intervention training because, as the listener writes… He thinks it will never happen here.
FEATURE TOPIC
As we train our employees to improve situational awareness it is important the lessons include a list of both positive and negative clues and cues that a worker must understand in order to develop and maintain strong situational awareness. 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.
Not all clues and cues are created equal
In the process of developing situational awareness it all starts with perception. Or, if you’re a fan of the Boyd OODA loop, observation. Name calling aside, it all begins with capturing the clues and cues in your environment and then processing them into meaning something. The problem is, some of the clues and cues… are not there. Really! They are absent. You cannot see them or hear them. But nonetheless, they may be as important as any clue or cue you can see or hear. Thus, situational awareness is formed based on what you see and hear and what you do not see and hear.
Positive clues and cues
The positive clues and cues are the easiest to detect because they can be seen and heard. Understanding them, on the other hand is a completely separate matter and one that I have written and spoken about extensively. Notwithstanding the challenges with comprehension, it is relatively easy to train a responder on what to look and listen for at an emergency scene. At a fire scene, some of the positive clues and cues might be smoke, flame, construction (and decomposition), victims and wind. For a sick person, some positive clues and cues might be respirations and lung sounds, pulse, blood pressure, skin color and temperature, and pupil size and reactions. These are all clues and cues that can be seen or heard.
Negative clues and cues
Negative clues and cues are much harder to detect and may also be more difficult to comprehend their meaning, especially the first time they are encountered. Because negative clues and cues are not actually there – they cannot be seen or heard – they can slip by a responder rather easily.
One of the examples I like to share during a program is to ask a young person in the room if sick kids cry. They always respond in the affirmative. Then I ask them if really sick kids cry harder. Again, they respond in the affirmative. Then I find a seasoned medical responder in the audience and ask them if really sick kids cry. They always say NO! Why?
Because really sick kids – the ones on death’s doorstep – do not cry. This is a negative clue that means a lot to a medical care team. If a responder did not know better, they might be lulled into thinking the kid who is quiet is not not as sick as the kid who is crying.
Novices v. Experts
When it comes to identifying positive clues and cues, novices and experts are about evenly matched. Again, notwithstanding there may be huge differences in the understanding of what the clues and cues mean, both are able to see and hear the same things. However, when it comes to negative clues and cues, the expert’s performance towers above the novice. To be able to SEE and HEAR clues and cues that are absent requires a deep understanding of what clues and cues should be present, yet are not.
This requires expert knowledge. An expert can look at a situation and draw a completely different conclusion about what is happening and how bad the situation is simply by combining the positive and negative clues and cues. What’s even more amazing is, the expert may be doing this subconsciously. That’s right. The expert may be unaware they are comparing the situation with what they have stored as typical situations and identifying absent clues and cues that prime recognition.
Advice
Novice officers should be assigned a mentor and spend time shadowing the expert during critical incidents that require decisions. The mentor can ask the novice to identify the clues and cues and draw a conclusion. The expert can then either affirm the conclusion or refute it with the addition of negative clues and cues the novice is unaware of. This can also be done in training scenarios and simulations using videos.
When experts draw different conclusions than novices, the simple act of the novice asking how the expert drew their conclusion might leave the expert without a good answer. This is because the expert may be doing the processing of negative clues and cues subconsciously. It may be hard for the expert to bring to words how they know what they know. This tacit knowledge (unconscious knowledge) is truly what separates experts from novices. An expert committed to sharing their knowledge will display patience and allow the novice to ask questions about how command decisions are made. Expert commanders, don’t think of this as defiance. Think of it as learning.
Discussions
1. Identify and discuss some specific positive and negative clues and cues for various work environments an employee may encounter (e.g., residential dwelling fire, motor vehicle accident scene, cardiac, etc.).
2. Discuss some strategies for teaching employees and supervisors on how to identify both positive and negative clues and cues.
3. Following the completion of a task, discuss the positive and negative clues and cues captured and evaluated that helped form situational awareness.
SITUATIONAL AWARENESS NEAR MISS LESSON LEARNED
This lesson comes to us from the Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System, where lessons learned become lessons applied.
COMMAND VEHICLE NEARLY BACKS OVER FF ROLLING HOSE.
#13-0000292
January 16, 2013
At about 1730 hours companies were dispatched to [location omitted] for an unknown fire. A resident could see flames. During the process of leaving the scene, The BC backed his vehicle and almost hit Lt. who was rolling a fire hose length behind the chief’s vehicle on the road.
The B/C involved in the near-miss had responded to the fire call and arrived as the second due Battalion Chief. The first due BC had responded and established Command for a field fire behind a building. I observed the crew and the lieutenant picking up hose. The weather was very cold and I only had on my station uniform and highway safety vest, I went back to the command vehicle and cleared with him to leave the scene. Upon returning to my vehicle I walked wide observing the rear of my car, removed and folded my vest, dropping it on the ground as I tried to place it back in the driver’s door pocket, I had to pick it up refold it and put it in the door properly.
When I got back in the car I remember it was cold and realized that I had left the passenger side window(s) open. I put up the (front) driver’s side window, adjusted the heater to high and sat there to warm up. I then looked behind through the vehicle mirrors and started backing. As soon as I backed up, I heard someone yell. I looked and saw someone at my rear window. I then realized that I had also opened my rear passenger side window and that is why I heard someone yell.
I got out of the car and made face-to-face communications with the lieutenant. He said: It’s OK, Chief you almost got me. I am OK. I asked: What are you doing? I saw he was rolling a hose and he did not directly answer. I also observed that he had a 1-3/4 roll of hose partially in his hands. He then moved the hose rolling to the side of the road and I left the scene. I re-entered my vehicle, realized the rear window was down, put up my (rear) passenger window and left the scene.
A few days later the Incident Commander (BC) called me and asked if I was aware that that I had hit the lieutenant. I said: Yes, but did I hit him or did you yell and he got out of the way? I also said it had disturbed me, because of my EGH position and my concern and passion for firefighter safety. I said: How would it look if the EGH guy ran someone over? He said he wanted to make sure I reviewed the incident with the lieutenant, and that there have been other backing incidents that have happened recently. I assured him I would.
The next shift, I met with the lieutenant. He and I discussed the incident and each of our parts of the event. I apologized for almost backing into him, since it could have caused death or injury. We discussed what went wrong. I explained the events from my point of view. I reviewed what I did in accordance with our policy and explained to him about the delay that caused me to take a longer time, resulting in me not seeing him move into that area, between the time I got in my car and the time I tried to leave. I cited the weather being cold, the open window, turning on my heater.
The lieutenant could not explain why he was rolling hose in the street and not on the paved driveway. We discussed what we could do to prevent it again. We discussed items such as, being more aware of your surroundings for both the driver and firefighter in traffic, using and soliciting a second party to assist the driver of single occupant vehicles (Chief’s, Inspectors, etc.). The Lt. suggested the use of backing alarms on staff vehicles, like the trucks have, that would have alerted him with a noise.
We also discussed the practice of After Action Reviews. The Lt. is a Marine Reserve and I asked and he explained the use of an AAR after any event the Marine Corps does. I discussed the use of an AAR and my work with the National Fallen Fire fighters Foundation.
LESSONS LEARNED
Members should follow all SOPs for backing procedures and work in teams having company officers supervising the work of firefighters and acting as safety officers. Drivers should use backers, making special a request when staff vehicles, such as chief’s cars and vehicles with one person don’t have a second person to back them up. Drivers, most importantly chief officer’s, must maintain situational awareness about how exposure to extreme environmental temperatures can lead to extra time needed between tasks. Staff vehicles should be fitted with Backup alarms.
You can visit them at www.FirefighterNearMiss.com
If you have experienced or witnessed a near miss and would like to be interviewed on this show, visit my companion site:
Click on the contact us link. Thank you, in advance, for sharing your lessons learned so others may live.
INFORMATION
If you are interested in attending a live event, you can check out the Situational Awareness Matters Tour Stop schedule at: SAMatters.com. Click on the Program and Keynotes tab just below the header, then click on the Events Schedule tab. If I’m in your area, I hope you will consider attending a live event.
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SAMATTERS COMMUNITY QUESTION
This question comes from an SAMatters reader.
QUESTION: Our department training officer doesn't think we need to train on rapid intervention and mayday because he thinks it will never happen here. Can you make any suggestions about how we can get him to understand anyone, anywhere, can have a mayday and need rapid intervention?
ANSWER: Thanks for writing in with the question. It is one thing to have a member in denial of the potential of your department having a mayday or needing a rapid intervention. It takes my concern to a whole new level when it's your training officer. I don't know your training officer so my advice here is unqualified but I'm going to go on a limb and say your training officer is either complacent or afraid of something.
He may be complacent because your department has NEVER had a mayday or a near-miss even closely resembling a casualty event. Rest assured, unless your department is somehow devoid of all risk associated with performing the skills of public safety providers, you are at-risk. There are ways to reduce risk, and to some degree manage risk. But there is no way to completely avoid risk. Living in the denial of the potential of a mayday is actually adding risk, which is not where you want to be.
I would recommend first talking to the training officer one-on-one in a non-threatening manner. Try to appeal to his sense of logic. It may be helpful to look for near-miss or casualty event that have occurred in communities similar to yours. I'm sure they're out there. And I'm sure those departments never thought they'd have a casualty event either. Ask the training officer to allow line personnel to train on skills that would help prevent a recurrence of that casualty in your town.
If the one-on-one approach does not work, consider finding a member who has a good relationship with the training officer and who is an advocate for your cause. Ask him or her to approach the training officer and make an appeal. Finally, if neither of those work, consider gathering the support of a group of firefighters to advance your cause. There's strength in numbers. Avoid being confrontational. You'll catch more bees with honey than you do with vinegar.
CLOSING
Thank you for sharing some of your valuable time with me today. I sincerely appreciate your support of my mission.
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Be safe out there. May the peace of the Lord, and strong situational awareness, be with you always.
You have been listening to the Situational Awareness Matters Radio show with Dr. Richard B. Gasaway. If you’re interested in learning more about situational awareness, human factors and decision making under stress, visit SAMatters.com. If you are interested in booking Dr. Gasaway for an upcoming event, visit his personal website at RichGasaway.com
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