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Situational Awareness for Emergency Response
$82.00
1
Situational Awareness for Emergency Response
Product Details
The book will autographed by the author and mailed
to the address provided during checkout.
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Written by: Dr. Richard B. Gasaway, Fire Chief (ret.)
380 pages
ISBN10 1-59370-307-4
Publisher: PennWell
Situational awareness is more complex than simply noticing what is happening around you. An emergency responder must capture clues and cues in the emergency environment, make sense of the information, and predict what will happen next.
In Situational Awareness for Emergency Response, Richard Gasaway establishes the foundation of decision making and the role of situational awareness in high-risk public safety environments. He explains his original research on command decisions and the barriers that challenge a commander's situational awareness, and offers lessons learned and best practices that can assist responders in preventing or overcoming the situational awareness barriers.
Situational Awareness for Emergency Response is an ideal resource for incident commanders, line personnel who make high-stress decisions, and students learning to develop and maintain situational awareness.
Features and benefits:
- Realize how decisions are made in high-stress, high-consequence, and time-compressed situations
- Understand situational awareness and its role in making good and bad decisions
- Identify barriers that challenge a commander’s situational awareness
- Improve your decision making with the lessons learned and recommended best practices
- Use the 25-point checklist as an incident evaluation tool to improve safety
Contents:
Part I: Decision making and situational awareness
- Introduction
- Traditional decision-making process
- Recognition-primed decision-making process
- Situational awareness
- Situational awareness research
Part II: Barriers to situational awareness
- Staffing
- Communications
- Physical and mental stress
- Workload management
- Human factor
- Attention management
- Command support
- Data and information management
- Mission and goals
- Mental model
- Command location
- Teamwork
Part III: Lessons & best practices
- Lessons for first responders
- Emergency scene situational awareness best practices
- 25-Point situational awareness health checklist
- Epilogue
About the author
Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, CSP is widely considered a trusted authority on human factors, situational awareness and the high-risk decision making processes used in high-stress, high consequence work environments. He served 33 years on the front lines as a firefighter, EMT-Paramedic, company officer, training officer, fire chief and emergency incident commander. His doctoral research included the study of cognitive neuroscience to understand how human factors flaw situational awareness and impact high-risk decision making.
FEEDBACK ON IS BOOK
Situational Awareness for Emergency Response (by Richard B. Gasaway) is an interesting book about a topic that is pertinent to each and every first responder. Chief Gasaway dedicated five years researching and applying situational awareness lessons for the benefit responders who are required to make high risk, high consequence decisions under stress and time compression.
Prior to reading his book (and attending his class) I knew very little about situational awareness. Chief Gasaway was able to explain this complex topic in ways that were easy to understand and apply. Now I recognize situational awareness is more than just a term. It is a thought process that runs through my mind and helps me evaluate situations with a new approach to risk management.
For example, while recently on vacation with my grandson, Nicholas, we were walking through a parking garage. I decided to let go of his hand and give him some independence and freedom to explore his surroundings. As I did this, however, I realized the risky situation he was in and I found myself constantly scanning my environment... looking left and right, front and back. I was on high alert for the dangers that could harm him. I was gathering information, making sense out of what I was seeing and hearing and anticipating future events before they happened. I was developing and maintaining situational awareness.
Through Dr. Gasaway's book and program I have learned situational awareness best practices I now use as a first responder and in my daily life. Chief Gasaway offers solid techniques that will improve the safety of first responders (and civilians) during emergency response situations.
This book is a must read for company officers, battalion chiefs and chief officers before they take command of your next incident. I truly believe what you read in this book today may save your life tomorrow.
Fire Chief John M. Buckman III
Director of Fire Training
State of Indiana
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I wanted to shoot you an email about your new book. I just finished reading it and found it easy to read, and full of fresh new information applied to the fire service. I am studying the Bryan, Texas line of duty deaths, and I added the six examples of questions on page 8 to the set of questions that I was using to evaluate the SA on this particular incident, and they really helped me gain some perspective. I found Chapters 8,10,11, and 15 particularly beneficial.
I have been doing considerable research on Emotional Intelligence, Survival Stress Reaction, and Mental Imaging to develop our Battalion Chiefs in these areas, and I have not found much in relations to the fire service. I am glad to see you introduce these to our profession. Good work! Your passion for the fire service and for this subject are evident.
J. Scott Thompson, Fire Chief
The Colony, Texas Fire Department
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Chief,
We often speak of technologies and tools which have made a strong impact on the fire service. For example, the Halligan tool, SCBA, portable radios, LDH. I bought your book at FDIC this year and have since been absorbing the practices which you lay out in the book. Situational awareness is one of those tools that will change the game once again. Thank you for taking the time to get your message out.
Captain Mark Mitchell
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Chief Gasaway,
I am reading your Situational Awareness book. Boy, do you know what you are talking about! I can easily see now how bad things happening just by standing back and looking at it. I have always wondered why we keep making the same mistakes over and over again, even when it doesn't seem right. From taking your classes and reading your books I now understand it better and I'm starting to figure it all out.
Assistant Chief Bruce McBride
Washington Township Fire Department
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Dear Dr. Rich Gasaway,
I know If I tried for a long time I could never find the words to accurately and clearly explain what your research and Life's work have done for me. Obviously I am going to try but please understand I am usually neither eloquent nor profound. I beseech you to please share my attempt to describe the impact your work has had on me by freely posting anything contained in this e-mail to any social media you frequent.
Straight to the point... I am not an expert in book reviews or any "science". That is something I think should be mentioned. I am a Fire Fighter and Emergency responder second to a husband and a father. I have others in my command on emergency scenes on a regular basis. Thus, I have the simplest and most complex job on scene "make sure we all do the best we can to make it back home alive and uninjured."
I have had success in that endeavor! I picked up your book because another "boots on the ground" fire officer had insisted it was worth my time and could mean the success of the mission I just described. I listened and got the book "situational awareness for first responders" primarily because the recommendation came from someone I look up to and respect a great deal.
For anyone that reads these words, please consider them carefully. I have read an assortment of fire and ems books to try everything possible to improve my abilities as a Fire Fighter and EMS provider and any host of other labels and job titles. I am a "volunteer to the bone" type. A lot of books I have read are so very good, I know they helped me. However, after reading your book, I will never be the same again! No other information or training has ever hit home with me so much that it changed and maybe will save my life!
I found it engaging, thought provoking, entertaining, and easy to read. I'm sure a lot of people can say the same for many other books. "Situational Awareness for Emergency Response" is an understandable, a "page turner" and every other positive description I have ever heard. BUT, THERE IS SOMETHING MORE TO THIS BOOK!
It is with me almost always because I have read it and re-read it, and read it some more. In fact, it is the only piece of literature I keep with me or near me as much as I do the Bible. I have had the privilege of reading and teaching from instructional books of all kinds and from all sorts and by many great authors and publishers! BUT, again, THERE IS SOMETHING MORE TO THIS BOOK!
You have to understand also that I am a person who often times has to read things multiple times to really digest the information and to have a good chance of accurate recall! I know there people out there who can read something one time and know the information from start to finish very well. I applaud those people. For ones like me this is a reread and part of me suspects that after I finally put it on a shelf, years from now I will occasionally be reading it again.
Let me share the impact this book had on me in a way many of your readers may relate to. After I began this book, I got so caught up in the layers and layers of information, I couldn't put it down. After I finished the book, I felt like I had just found a confidence I didn't possess before. Now, I got called to a structure fire and can remember thinking on the way to the call: "I am so much more prepared for my job as a fire officer!" Then "IT" happened. I arrived on the scene of this working structure and my knees buckled. I felt that uneasy feeling like when I first started in this life-taking profession.
I can truly say in my short 15 years of working emergency scenes I must have been wearing a blindfold. It was as if I had worked, learned and even taught in the dark, and finally someone or something had illuminated the whole scene! Admittedly, this was both frightened and it made me think, I could have died or worse gotten someone killed so many times and was completely missing the big picture! Yes I know what tunnel vision is and have taught it to others, but not like I know it now. Yes I can read fire behavior and better yet can sometimes predict human reaction to that fire behavior, but not like I can now. Did I tell you THERE IS SOMETHING MORE TO THIS BOOK?
Now, what I tell anyone who will listen, GO READ THIS BOOK and more over, attend any class, speech, lecture, or seminar on situational awareness by Dr. Rich Gasaway because, while I didn't think it was possible, the class enhances the book! I have the privilege of calling myself a Fire Fighter and I earned that by listening to other "experienced " Fire Fighters and applying their lessons and experiences they were so kind to share with me. I am so Blessed! Someone I look up to told me about this book and the work of Dr. Rich Gasaway, and I listened and paid "attention"! What else can I say? Oh, I Know...THERE IS SOMETHING MORE TO THIS BOOK!
Respectfully,
Chris Peak, VOLUNTEER
Fire Captain / Instructor
INDIANA
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