Don't run
Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 1:00PM ‘Don’t run’. It’s something that every rescue worker has to learn early on in their career, and of course there are always times when they should run, but why do we have to emphasise not running to new recruits?
The easy way to justify it is simply to avoid new recruits tripping over as they run. We do work in dangerous environments where tripping over is easy, especially when running. The last thing we need is to have to pull out another casualty from our own team. But is there more to the philosophy of don’t run?
One of the issues with running is it raises your heart rate amongst many physical changes going on in your body. These changes are good in many circumstances. There is some research to indicate that a raised heart rate and increased adrenalin do actually increase your speed of thinking and slow your perception of time. This can speed up your reaction and save your life in those situations where split second timing make all the difference.
So of the physiological changes that come with running to an incident can give use some crucial advatages, but like many things in life they do come with trade-offs. The increased heart rate and fight or flight hormones tend to come with a more aggressive, assertive way of decision making. Just think about how your way of thinking changes from a calm controlled state when you are relaxed but focussed to an incident where you have just had a shot of adrenaline like a car crash. When your body is pumping, thoughts are coming thick and fast, your are focusing on what you are seening directly in front of you, decisions can rapidly change but they are focused on action, on doing something right now. When you are calm, you mentally take that step back. Things that are going on in your peripheral vision take on more signficiance, you can see more people and the interactions between those people, you can take in what people are telling you, you can look into their eyes and see what they are feeling and decisions can be made based on everything you know that is going on rather than just what is front of you right now.
In many rescue situations, those calm, rational decisions are vital to you and your teams safety in the first stages of an incident. In rescue situations where you have spent hours or days trying to reach the casualty, often seconds or minutes do not matter but good decisions in that first hour do.
That is why you should train yourself not to run. Yes, there are times when seconds count and you need to go for it. But without training yourself out of that attitude it is too easy to run straight to the casualty as soon as you see them and make a bad call or miss something that puts your casualty, yourself and your team at risk.
‘Don’t run’. It’s something that every rescue worker has to learn early on in their career, and of course there are always times when they should run, but why do we have to emphasise not running to new recruits?
The easy way to justify it is simply to avoid new recruits tripping over as they run. We do work in dangerous environments where tripping over is easy, especially when running. The last thing we need is to have to pull out another casualty from our own team. But is there more to the philosophy of don’t run? One of the issues with running is it raises your heart rate amongst many physical changes going on in your body. These changes are good in many circumstances. There is some research to indicate that a raised heart rate and increased adrenalin do actually increase your speed of thinking and slow your perception of time. This can speed up your reaction and save your life in those situations where split second timing make all the difference.
So of the physiological changes that come with running to an incident can give use some crucial advatages, but like many things in life they do come with trade-offs. The increased heart rate and fight or flight hormones tend to come with a more aggressive, assertive way of decision making. Just think about how your way of thinking changes from a calm controlled state when you are relaxed but focussed to an incident where you have just had a shot of adrenaline like a car crash. When your body is pumping, thoughts are coming thick and fast, your are focusing on what you are seening directly in front of you, decisions can rapidly change but they are focused on action, on doing something right now.
When you are calm, you mentally take that step back. Things that are going on in your peripheral vision take on more signficiance, you can see more people and the interactions between those people, you can take in what people are telling you, you can look into their eyes and see what they are feeling and decisions can be made based on everything you know that is going on rather than just what is front of you right now.
In many rescue situations, those calm, rational decisions are vital to you and your teams safety in the first stages of an incident. In rescue situations where you have spent hours or days trying to reach the casualty, often seconds or minutes do not matter but good decisions in that first hour do.That is why you should train yourself not to run. Yes, there are times when seconds count and you need to go for it. But without training yourself out of that attitude it is too easy to run straight to the casualty as soon as you see them and make a bad call or miss something that puts your casualty, yourself and your team at risk.