Safety skills situation awareness

The attractiveness of systems and engineering approaches in reducing safety incidents has unfortunately not eUminated individual behaviour as the most frequently reported cause. An analysis by Endsley (1999), that most human error incidents resulted from a loss of situational awareness (SA) rather than judgement or skill based decisions, emphasized the importance of attention recovery mechanisms for safety critical roles. Marty papers have been published dealing with attention recovery and fatigue countermeasures to date, however, none have been found that include a mechanism to enable instantaneous and cued recovery at the moment of demand. This chapter formalizes a practice based approach to recovery of SA delivered in over 20 years of counselling and coaching performance with a diversity of clients. 

Coping Skills Involves the stability and orierrtation of mood and affect of the person as it impacts safety-orientated behaviour by way of their diligence, alertness and situational awareness, energy and resporrsiveness in addition to the adequacy of interaction with others. 

The objectives of training programs for chemical workers are to provide awareness of the potential hazards they may encounter and to provide the knowledge and skills necessary to perform the work with minimal risk. Additional requirements are to make workers aware of the purpose and limitations of safety equipment and to ensure that they can safely avoid or escape during an emergency situation. 

Such competence does not necessarily depend on the possession of particular skills or qualifications. It may only be required to understand relevant current best practice, be aware of one s own limitations in terms of experience and knowledge and be willing to supplement existing experience and knowledge. However, in more complex or technical situations membership of a relevant professional body and/or the possession of an appropriate qualification in health and safety may be necessary. 

Instruction in the SA recovery technique proceeded subsequent to identification of the need for the SA skill for both groups and assessed using the Situational Safety Awareness test (SSA test). Results were discussed and explored with emphasis on the Mental Alertness, Safety Habits and Coping Style scales of the test (Rosenweg, 2001). 

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