Chapter 9: Workload Management Flashcards
Chapter 9: Workload Management p127
In the aftermath of a catastrophic event emergency, what do commanders often confide about what affected their performance?
That they were affected by excessive workload or poor management of the workload.
Chapter 8: Physical and Mental Stress 128
When your brain is using all of its capacity to process information about an emergency scene your “hourglass” icon pops up because your brain has reached its maximum capacity. What effect does that have on your situational awareness
When this happens new information may not get in, literally.
Your eyes may not see visual cues and clues. Peers may not hear audible clues and cues, including important radio messages. Your brain may not process the visual and audio information because it’s too busy processing other information.
Chapter 8: Physical and Mental Stress 129
What might explain in part how clues & cues leading up to a catastrophic event might unfold right in front of responders?
They may have reached their capacity to process new information about their situation. Resulting in missing the changes in their environment.
Chapter 8: Physical and Mental Stress 129
Can you multitask
No you can’t. Biologically impossible to pay attention to more than one thing at a time.
Chapter 8: Physical and Mental Stress 129-130
What are the two parts of your brain’s attention management system?
Autopilot – your subconscious brain at the subconscious level your brain stores learned behaviors and allows you to perform task without giving them much thought. Task like walking, eating, driving can happen automatically because you’ve done them so many times before your subconscious brain is able to control the behavior behind the scenes.
Pilot system – activities that are new or that are not memorized are controlled by your conscious brain. To do these task you actually have to think about and concentrate on what you’re doing. It’s multitasking at this level that is impossible to do.
Chapter 8: Physical and Mental Stress 130
But I can multi-task.
Thinking about how to do something and then quickly shift your focus to another task, then back to the first task in very rapid succession argue its multitasking.
No, every time the conscious brain shifts from one attention task to the other and then back to the first there’s a chance that you would either forget where you left off or struggled to locate the point of reference where you left off.
Making you vulnerable to picking up in a different spot and thus forgetting to do something important.
Chapter 8: Physical and Mental Stress 132
What are the two reasons that many first responders preform activities on the emergency scene using conscious memory?
- Lack of continual and repetitive practice – repetition can lead to memorization, when this happens the knowledge of what to do and how to do it transitions from conscious memory to subconscious memory.
- Every emergency scene is unique, presenting the responder with a novel set of circumstances that cannot be managed using subconsciously stored information.
Chapter 8: Physical and Mental Stress 132
At a stressful emergency scene the more task you tried to do simultaneously will lead to…
The more task you try to perform simultaneously under stress, the more likely you are to make mistakes.
The more information you try to process in your conscious memory, the more likely you are to become overloaded and overwhelmed.
Chapter 8: Physical and Mental Stress 133
If you are attempting to fill more than one role a.k.a. multitasking what are you at risk of?
You’re at risk of becoming overloaded and overwhelmed because of the limitations of your brain to process information at the conscious level.
When you multitask at the conscious level, which is really single tasking in multiple secession, you are setting something aside if only momentarily to do something else.
Chapter 8: Physical and Mental Stress 134
What are the two results that can happen from attempting to multitask, single tasking and multiple succession?
- You can forget where you left off
- You can come back to the task you’re performing and thank you already did a step, when in fact the only thought about doing it and you never actually did it.
The result is the same – the potential of failing to do something important.
Chapter 8: Physical and Mental Stress 134
Why should the commander never perform hands-on task?
Physical task are mentally demanding- your brain has to think about both the steps of the task and coordinating all eye movement, ear equilibrium, and muscular movements in unison. And it’s a significant demand on your brain’s processing power.
Reason why the commander should not be performing hands-on task.
*Your brains hierarchy of functions gives precedence to performing physical tasks that keep you from getting hurt or killed.
Chapter 8: Physical and Mental Stress 135
The instant commander takes on a physical task their ability to process and understand what is happening at the overall incident scene can be substantially affected.
What are the two ways this happens?
- You used the brain’s capacity to perform physical tasks limiting your processing power available understanding the emergency scene.
- It’s impossible to focus on both things at the same time
Chapter 8: Physical and Mental Stress 135-136
why can’t the commander with the physical task?
You simply cannot be hands on and focused on the big picture simultaneously. If you try you’re gonna miss something.
It’s challenging enough for commanders to see, hear, and process things are happening in the high stress environment as is.
Chapter 8: Physical and Mental Stress 136
What is a possible reason that commanders get “hands on” at an emergency scene when that is not their role?
When your body and brain are under stress one of the things that happens is that your brain will direct your body to do things that are more comfortable, habits.
A new commander, recently promoted, under stress will find themselves being drawn to perform hands-on task because that’s what their brains are directing them to do.
The task they are more comfortable with, the task they know they are good at.
