Threat assessment, sense making, and critical decision-making in police, military, ambulance, and fire services

Abstract

Military and emergency response remain inherently dangerous occupations that require the ability to accurately assess threats and make critical decisions under significant time pressures. The cognitive processes associated with these abilities are complex and have been the subject of several significant, albeit service specific studies. Here, we present an attempt at finding the commonalities in threat assessment, sense making, and critical decision-making for emergency response across police, military, ambulance, and fire services. Relevant research is identified and critically appraised through a systematic literature review of English-language studies published from January 2000 through July 2020 on threat assessment and critical decision-making theory in dynamic emergency service and military environments. A total of 10,084 titles and abstracts were reviewed, with 94 identified as suitable for inclusion in the study. We then present our findings focused on six lines of enquiry: Bibliometrics, Language, Situation Awareness, Critical Decision Making, Actions, and Evaluation. We then thematically analyse these findings to reveal the commonalities between the four services. Despite existing single or dual service studies in the field, this research is significant in that it is the first examine decision making and threat assessment theory across all four contexts of military, police, fire and ambulance services, but it is also the first to assess the state of knowledge and explore the extent that commonality exists and models or practices can be applied across each discipline. The results demonstrate all military and emergency services personnel apply both intuitive and formal decision-making processes, depending on multiple situational and individual factors. Institutional restriction of decision-making to a single process at the expense of the consideration of others, or the inappropriate training and application of otherwise appropriate decision-making processes in certain circumstances is likely to increase the potential for adverse outcomes, or at the very least restrict peak performance being achieved. The applications of the findings of the study not only extend to facilitating improved practice in each of the individual services examined, but provide a basis to assist future research, and contribute to the literature exploring threat assessment and decision making in dynamic contexts.

Ethical Decision Making in Disaster and Emergency Management: A Systematic Review of the Literature

“…In such circumstances, priority of decision making related to these functions may be equal to or higher than the immediate patient or health care priority it is balanced against. Kalajtzidis noted such variance in decision making theory, models, and practices, a finding that is consistent with those of Penney, et al 2,14 Kalajtzidis provides an overview of moral dilemma as it relates to ethical decision making in disasters, considering concepts of consequentialism and moral intuition that can inform action, but also concludes noting the unanswered question of how ethical decision should be made or guided in disasters. 14 Ekmekci and Folayan proposed a theoretical ethical framework to guide decision making in public health emergencies, drawing on practices informed from previous studies by Beauchamp and Childress.…”

Identifying challenges to critical incident decision-making through a macro-, meso-, and micro- lens: A systematic synthesis and holistic narrative analysis

“…Narrative synthesis has been shown to consistently provide a nuanced and comprehensive insight into complex multi-agency emergency response decision-making (e.g., House et al, 2014 ; Penney et al, 2022 ). Eligible articles were initially coded independently by the principal investigator, allowing for the distribution of research to be categorized by macro-, meso-, and micro- levels (e.g., whether articles focused primarily on cognitive factors, organizational factors, or political factors).…”

Authority gradients between rail network controllers, train crew and track workers in Australia and New Zealand: motivations and behaviours

“…Given a lack of prior research on this topic, inductive thematic analysis (e.g. Penney et al 2022) was employed to identify core attitudes and assumptions, and formed the basis of the key themes (Braun & Clarke 2006). As the research sought to reveal meaning in language and action, the approach drew on principles from constructivist grounded theory for understanding data (Charmaz 2017a).…”