Fire Chief Hawaii Fire Department Hilo, Hawaii, United States
The Fire Service has for the better part of the last century relied on experience as a tool to teach and pass down information. Just as we are learning more year by year that the science of fire is a new area of research requiring expertise and new tactics and strategies, so has the ability to assess risk, make critical decisions and properly recognize how our brains process information in times of low and high stress. Our cognitive ability to accurately recognize and filter messages can be impaired by bias and impairment. This session will help Chief Officers understand how our brains process information and identify some of the common pitfalls when bias, stress, incident complexity all combine to steer us down a path of failure.
Learning Objectives:
1. Recognize that our brains and cognitive abilities have limits and can be challenged. This can and will affect performance in the fire service. Through experiments learners will see several examples of cognitive impairment live in session.
Recognize and make the linkages to biases, wellness, and how high risk and high frequency ( bread and butter repetitive calls) events are fraught with pitfalls that could cause severe outcomes. Possible case studies will be explored to demonstrate how quickly impairment can challenge decision making.
Provide clear actions and information for awareness on how to recognize you're in and climb out of the cognitive basement.