Injured during training is a headline you read and think, man, that sucks. What could have been done to prevent this type of accident? During the Nov. 2011 ITRS conference a paper was presented which discussed a training accident and ultimately a near miss. It was the classic scenario, it was the last evolution of the day and a miss communication about who was in charge and a general complacency that seems to develop in many training situations.
If you’ve done any all-day training events you’ve been there. You’ve seen the attitudes start serious in the morning and then in the evening a cavalier attitude develops. Why this happens seems to be that people are getting comfortable with the evolution and a general expectation of how things work. This is kind of what we want, but the loss of focus especially when using live victims or putting people over the edge can have significant consequences.
I wish I had some sort of solution or suggested action to help teams prevent training accidents or even training complacency, but the only thing that comes to mind is to remain vigilant during training. Instill a sense of significance in what people are doing, especially at the end of a long day of training. In any case, keep yourself and your team safe and remind them that accidents typically happen late in the day of training. Call a “Stop” if people are not focused, anyone should be able to call a “Stop” at any time during a training or real mission.
If you have any data or solutions, please feel free to share them either in comments below or with me directly and I’ll see about getting them to the BCR readership (emai BCReditor@gmail.com).
