Latest / The You Project / #1687 Wonder Woman - Dr. Sabrina Cohen-Hatton (PT2)

Transcript

#1687 Wonder Woman - Dr. Sabrina Cohen-Hatton (PT2) · The You Project

0:00
Speaker 1: Good a team.
0:01
Speaker 2: This is part two of the conversation we started yesterday
0:04
Speaker 2: with Sabrina, hope you're enjoying it. I won't get in
0:07
Speaker 2: the way of what is to come enjoy.
0:10
Speaker 1: See you at the end. Does that mean Sabrina your
0:16
Speaker 1: honor doctor? Does that mean that?
0:19
Speaker 2: Like my thinking is generally like when I would like,
0:23
Speaker 2: I've worked with first responders over here, with Victoria police
0:26
Speaker 2: and with the military a little bit, and with lots
0:28
Speaker 2: of elite athletes. And we just did a big study
0:31
Speaker 2: out of Monash where I study which I had my
0:33
Speaker 2: first academic paper published, which is hilarious, which is hilarious.
0:38
Speaker 2: Hang on because there's like fifty authors, so I really
0:42
Speaker 2: don't deserve any credit whatsoever, but my name is on it.
0:50
Speaker 2: What I wanted to say was, generally speaking, we train
0:57
Speaker 2: a soldiers and police, especially the special operators like in
1:05
Speaker 2: Victoria they call it Special Operations Group, they call them soggies,
1:08
Speaker 2: and you know the elite soldiers where they do a
1:13
Speaker 2: lot of like intense high level, high pressure, uncomfortable like
1:20
Speaker 2: they just get put through the grind. It's it's as
1:24
Speaker 2: it's as as realistic as it can be without it
1:28
Speaker 2: being real. Is there a similar approach to train firefighters
1:32
Speaker 2: to be able to deal with that, because you can't
1:35
Speaker 2: perform under pressure if you're never under pressure.
1:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally agree. I totally agree. And if you are
1:42
Speaker 3: just going through the motions. I mean, there's an element
1:45
Speaker 3: where you can do that for skills development, right where
1:47
Speaker 3: you're learning a skill and you're doing it slow time
1:49
Speaker 3: and then you get better at it. But unless you're
1:52
Speaker 3: actually testing that skill under pressure, actually, how do you
1:55
Speaker 3: know that you're going to be able to use it
1:57
Speaker 3: when you need to use it, because, by the way,
1:59
Speaker 3: that time is going to be under intense pressure, both
2:02
Speaker 3: in terms of the pressure of the environment, the moral
2:05
Speaker 3: pressure that you're under from people who are watching on
2:08
Speaker 3: the people that you might be trying to rescue, and
2:10
Speaker 3: experiencing someone else. You know, when someone else is in
2:13
Speaker 3: pain or someone else has just experienced the death of
2:16
Speaker 3: someone that they love literally next to them in a
2:19
Speaker 3: car or in a house that you've managed to rescue
2:22
Speaker 3: one from, and someone else, there is nothing that prepares
2:26
Speaker 3: you for the emotion that you hear in that person's
2:31
Speaker 3: There is nothing that prepares you for that. But you
2:34
Speaker 3: have to carry on. You have to be able to
2:36
Speaker 3: do what you need to do. And I'm particularly interested
2:40
Speaker 3: in non technical skills. In the UK, we term them
2:42
Speaker 3: command skills, so your ability to make decisions, your situational awareness,
2:47
Speaker 3: your communication skills, your leadership skills, your ability to work
2:50
Speaker 3: as a part of a team. You know, all of
2:52
Speaker 3: these things are skills. They're not you know, they're not.
2:56
Speaker 3: They're not some kind of higher gift that you get
2:58
Speaker 3: that you know you're kind of born with. If you're
3:00
Speaker 3: either a great decision maker or you're not, you've got
3:02
Speaker 3: to work at it. And working at it means doing
3:05
Speaker 3: it in the kind of environment that you're readily going
3:07
Speaker 3: to expect to use it in, and in our world,
3:10
Speaker 3: that means that it's going to be emotionally charged, dynamically changing,
3:14
Speaker 3: with little or incomplete information, sometimes inaccurate information, and it's
3:19
Speaker 3: really tough. And it's a bit like swimming. If you
3:22
Speaker 3: wanted to swim the length of the channel or swim
3:25
Speaker 3: in the sea, but you only ever trained in an
3:28
Speaker 3: Olympic sized swimming pool. You know what, you might be
3:31
Speaker 3: the fastest, the best, that you might have the greatest
3:35
Speaker 3: endurance in a pool, but as soon as you get
3:38
Speaker 3: out in the sea, even though it's the same skill,
3:41
Speaker 3: the context is so different, the application changes, and so
3:44
Speaker 3: you're not going to be able to do it in
3:45
Speaker 3: the same way. And those kind of non technical skills,
3:48
Speaker 3: the development of those are similar. So whatever technical skill
3:52
Speaker 3: you might be doing under pressure, it is determined by
3:56
Speaker 3: your non technical skills. Your ability to make a judgment
3:59
Speaker 3: on when that needs to applied or how that needs
4:01
Speaker 3: to be applied, Your ability to communicate your intentions, your
4:04
Speaker 3: ability to absorb the information from around you that you
4:07
Speaker 3: need to create, your situational awareness, your mental picture, that
4:10
Speaker 3: which is the basis of every single decision and every
4:13
Speaker 3: single judgment that you make. That is tough, and if
4:17
Speaker 3: you want to do that under pressure, we need to
4:19
Speaker 3: recognize that stress affects the processing capacity that you have available.
4:23
Speaker 3: It reduces it, so you have less processing capacity available
4:26
Speaker 3: to absorb that information. You have less processing capacity available
4:30
Speaker 3: to make a decision, You have less processing capacity available
4:33
Speaker 3: to think about the message that you're trying to communicate
4:35
Speaker 3: and whether or not that meaning has landed in the
4:38
Speaker 3: way that you intended it to land. These are all
4:40
Speaker 3: really important factors for the success of the overarching incident
4:43
Speaker 3: because it's complex. So if you want those to work effectively.
4:47
Speaker 3: You have to train them under pressure. Is no good
4:50
Speaker 3: just doing it in slow time. You have to train
4:53
Speaker 3: under pressure, and so making people feel uncomfortable by putting
4:58
Speaker 3: if you're doing a command at exercise, for example, by
5:01
Speaker 3: throwing lots of injects in so you don't have time
5:04
Speaker 3: to think about something, you don't have the luxury of
5:07
Speaker 3: being able to hold lots of things together in your
5:09
Speaker 3: mind at one point. It creates that sense of pressure
5:12
Speaker 3: where you then have to prioritize your activity. And actually,
5:15
Speaker 3: even if in real time the situation might not be
5:18
Speaker 3: like that for the full duration of the hour that
5:21
Speaker 3: your command exercise is, actually you're compressing it, and so
5:25
Speaker 3: what you get is like really deep practice. If you've
5:29
Speaker 3: heard the term deep practice, it's what you're kind of synthesizing,
5:34
Speaker 3: and it's about feeling uncomfortable. It's about doing things wrong
5:37
Speaker 3: and then repeating them in a different way so that
5:39
Speaker 3: you can do it better next time. But creating that
5:42
Speaker 3: sense of pressure in whatever way you can do it
5:45
Speaker 3: is super important. I'm a really big fan of realistic exercises.
5:49
Speaker 3: I know they're super expensive to do. I know it's hard,
5:53
Speaker 3: especially when you get places like I mean in the UK,
5:56
Speaker 3: we have the Casualties Union, who are an amazing group
5:58
Speaker 3: of people, many of whom are amputees who've been through
6:01
Speaker 3: traumatic incidents themselves, who will come in and role play
6:05
Speaker 3: that they have incredible makeup on to simulate, to simulate
6:10
Speaker 3: traumatic injuries, and they respond in a way that is
6:14
Speaker 3: really realistic. And these people are incredible because bear in
6:17
Speaker 3: mind they've had their own traumas. To come in and
6:19
Speaker 3: to be able to do that those experiences to help
6:23
Speaker 3: develop the people that they know other people will rely
6:27
Speaker 3: on in the future to go and rescue them from
6:29
Speaker 3: similar circumstances is a level of courage that to me
6:33
Speaker 3: is absolutely god worthy. It is awesome. But that kind
6:40
Speaker 3: of realistic opportunity is worth waiting gold, absolutely worth its
6:45
Speaker 3: weight in gold. But whatever you're doing when you're training,
6:48
Speaker 3: don't just go through the motions. Don't just go to
6:50
Speaker 3: get through the end of the exercise. Make it count.
6:53
Speaker 3: You can never train too hard for a job where
6:57
Speaker 3: you know people die.
7:00
Speaker 2: I love that and it's so like I always you know,
7:03
Speaker 2: I use this analogy of white belt to black belt
7:06
Speaker 2: and I say, you know, the way that you become
7:08
Speaker 2: a black belt in any martial art is you start
7:11
Speaker 2: as a white belt, you get punched in the face,
7:13
Speaker 2: you get kicked in the deck, you get choked.
7:16
Speaker 1: You know, this is what happens.
7:18
Speaker 2: You know, you get beaten up, and then eventually you're
7:21
Speaker 2: a yellow, then eventually a green, and a brown, and
7:24
Speaker 2: a purple and a blue, and then whatever the system is,
7:26
Speaker 2: you know, and then one day you wake up. You're
7:28
Speaker 2: the same person with the same potential and the same genetics,
7:32
Speaker 2: but now you've got new skills, new awareness, new resilience,
7:36
Speaker 2: new understanding, new insight, same human but not really. And
7:41
Speaker 2: now you've got that you can perform under a level
7:45
Speaker 2: of pressure that you couldn't even think about when you're
7:48
Speaker 2: a white belt, because you didn't know what you were doing.
7:51
Speaker 2: You couldn't be calm, you didn't know how to self regulate.
7:54
Speaker 2: And now five six, seven, eight, ten years down the track,
7:58
Speaker 2: you've got this high level of ability and skill to
8:01
Speaker 2: be able to do this thing that most people can't.
8:04
Speaker 2: And it's because you did the work, and it's because
8:06
Speaker 2: you weren't fucking around. It's because you had five dislocated
8:10
Speaker 2: elbows and these, it's because you've got a thousand black eyes,
8:13
Speaker 2: it's because you've got choked fifty times. It's like that's
8:17
Speaker 2: you can't get good at the thing that you're not doing.
8:19
Speaker 1: You can't master the thing that you avoid.
8:22
Speaker 2: And you can read about it and hear about it
8:24
Speaker 2: and watch fucking videos on it and listen to lectures
8:27
Speaker 2: about it, but unless you're actually doing it, like unless
8:31
Speaker 2: you're actually at the coal face, rolling up your sleeves
8:34
Speaker 2: and doing the shit or a version of it, then
8:38
Speaker 2: when the storm cometh, Brothers and Sisters.
8:42
Speaker 1: You capitulate.
8:44
Speaker 2: You know, We've had lots of people and speaking to that,
8:48
Speaker 2: just as an example, we've had people on the show
8:51
Speaker 2: and I can't say who, but it doesn't matter.
8:54
Speaker 1: Well, no, I can't say who.
8:56
Speaker 2: But even something like this where people can obviously, you know,
9:02
Speaker 2: they've got their expertise like you, they've got skill knowledge,
9:06
Speaker 2: you know, all of that. They can communicate and sometimes
9:09
Speaker 2: they've written a book and you know, some whatever. But
9:13
Speaker 2: then you put them on either I used to work
9:16
Speaker 2: in radio as well, and so you put them in
9:18
Speaker 2: a radio interview or on an interview with this where
9:22
Speaker 2: you say, you know, you give them a backstory of
9:24
Speaker 2: you know, how many people listen and what we do
9:26
Speaker 2: and and all of a sudden and we're live. That
9:31
Speaker 2: person goes from being interesting and funny and articulate too. Yes, no, no, yeah,
9:40
Speaker 2: I'm like, fucking hell, somebody just removed his personality in
9:43
Speaker 2: the last thirty seconds. And it's just it's terrible because
9:49
Speaker 2: to them, there's when you say, I used to say
9:53
Speaker 2: to people, there's only twenty thousand people, don't you know listening,
9:56
Speaker 2: don't worry, And I would say that's fuck around. I
9:59
Speaker 2: don't say it anymore, or how I can say it
10:02
Speaker 2: to you because you do this all the time. But like,
10:05
Speaker 2: and then people, especially if you're thinking of a stadium
10:08
Speaker 2: of humans or something, that's something that they do all
10:12
Speaker 2: the time, which is talk and share and educate. Now
10:15
Speaker 2: you're doing it in a different context and they can't
10:18
Speaker 2: string three words together because there's a level, a self
10:21
Speaker 2: created level of pressure.
10:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, and maybe I influenced that a little bit.
10:27
Speaker 3: It's true though, And it's you know, it's really similar
10:30
Speaker 3: when you think about things like, you know, even a
10:33
Speaker 3: job interview or a presentation.
10:35
Speaker 4: How many times when.
10:36
Speaker 3: You've got a big presentation, have you kind of practiced
10:38
Speaker 3: that in front of a plant pot or in front
10:40
Speaker 3: of the dog. Well, guess what the dog's never going
10:42
Speaker 3: to troll you on Twitter.
10:43
Speaker 5: It's a safe environment. You know, You've got to do
10:47
Speaker 5: it in front of people that make you feel uncomfortable,
10:50
Speaker 5: because when you step in to do that presentation or
10:53
Speaker 5: that job interview, you're going to be running on adrenaline.
10:56
Speaker 5: You're going to feel anxious, you're going to feel uncomfortable.
10:58
Speaker 5: So you need to know that you can do it
11:01
Speaker 5: despite that feeling. You need to know that you've practiced
11:04
Speaker 5: it in that kind of enviroment. You need to know
11:06
Speaker 5: the places that your head is going to go blank,
11:07
Speaker 5: where you're going to stumble, so then you can go
11:09
Speaker 5: and focus on those bits and make sure you know
11:11
Speaker 5: it better.
11:12
Speaker 3: You know that for me, it's a gift. It's an
11:15
Speaker 3: absolute gift to have an opportunity to practice something before
11:19
Speaker 3: you go in and before you do it, and to
11:21
Speaker 3: develop those skills. And if it means, you know, you
11:23
Speaker 3: feel uncomfortable, it means you mess something up, or it
11:27
Speaker 3: means you feel a bit silly, well, you know what,
11:29
Speaker 3: that's a really small price to pay for all of
11:32
Speaker 3: the good stuff that could come out of you being
11:34
Speaker 3: successful at this, you know, and in my world that
11:37
Speaker 3: means people walk away, They get to go back to
11:40
Speaker 3: their families. At the end of the day. There's not
11:42
Speaker 3: this great, big void left by someone that's no longer
11:45
Speaker 3: walking this planet. What a gift, What a gift.
11:49
Speaker 2: A couple of years ago, and I know you've got
11:52
Speaker 2: to go. We'll talk about your book in a moment.
11:54
Speaker 2: But a couple of years ago, Sabrina, that's actually it
11:58
Speaker 2: was it three years ago, the Crab.
12:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, three yeah, So I was.
12:04
Speaker 2: You know, I think I told you before when it
12:06
Speaker 2: went live. I've been training my whole life. I owned
12:09
Speaker 2: gyms all that, so go to the gym every day
12:11
Speaker 2: and just left. Shit, I'm not very good anymore. I'm old,
12:13
Speaker 2: I'm a bit fucked. But anyway, I still go down,
12:15
Speaker 2: you know, sit on a dumbbell. But anyway, The Crab
12:20
Speaker 2: my training partner, Mark, who I lovingly call the Crab
12:24
Speaker 2: because he moves like a crab. He's like a large
12:26
Speaker 2: crustacean with biceps. But anyway, so we were training and
12:31
Speaker 2: he did a set of chin ups, held his breath
12:35
Speaker 2: the whole time. Sabrina did thirty chin ups, not an exaggeration.
12:40
Speaker 2: X pro body built, a very strong, very big all
12:42
Speaker 2: of that. Did thirty chins came down and went to
12:46
Speaker 2: his hands and knees, and I thought he was having
12:48
Speaker 2: a seizure, and he had a cardiac arrest and died
12:55
Speaker 2: in the gym, on the gym floor. So he came
12:58
Speaker 2: back to life. I need say that quickly, but he
13:02
Speaker 2: was dead for seventeen minutes. And and talk about, you know,
13:08
Speaker 2: people under pressure, I would say there was. There's probably
13:12
Speaker 2: twenty people in the gym, but in him because there's
13:15
Speaker 2: there's levels to the gym. But within a couple of
13:18
Speaker 2: minutes there were thirty or forty people in the gym,
13:21
Speaker 2: and so i'd you know, his big unit is one
13:23
Speaker 2: hundred kilos, which I don't know what that is in
13:25
Speaker 2: stone seventeen stone maybe, So I you know, I got
13:29
Speaker 2: him on his back, I got him into a position
13:32
Speaker 2: where I could work on him. And I did that
13:34
Speaker 2: like as soon as I realized what had happened, which
13:38
Speaker 2: was quite quickly.
13:41
Speaker 1: So I started.
13:42
Speaker 2: Working on him by myself. Now thirty people were standing
13:46
Speaker 2: on the other side of the gym, not one thing
13:49
Speaker 2: like looking terrified. Not one person went what can I do?
13:56
Speaker 2: Not one person said can I help? And so I
14:00
Speaker 2: just looked up and said I need somebody and they
14:03
Speaker 2: all stood there like nobody came, and so here's here's
14:08
Speaker 2: my friend on the floor. I'm doing the compressions and
14:11
Speaker 2: the breaths. I'm so I'm alternating, and I'm you know,
14:15
Speaker 2: I'm busy.
14:16
Speaker 1: I got shipped on and.
14:18
Speaker 2: I look up and nobody moved forward. Nobody came.
14:21
Speaker 1: They all just stood there looking terrified.
14:25
Speaker 2: And then this one bloke kind of looked semi like
14:29
Speaker 2: like he was thinking about it. And I said, what's
14:32
Speaker 2: your name? And he said his name? And I said,
14:35
Speaker 2: let's just go, Steve, and I said, Steven, get the
14:37
Speaker 2: fuck over here. He's like, I don't know what to do.
14:40
Speaker 2: I go get the fuck over here. I'll tell you
14:42
Speaker 2: what to do, right and that that But that a maze. Well,
14:46
Speaker 2: that was messy, and that was you know, like a
14:49
Speaker 2: daunting scenario, of course, but I was upon reflection later,
14:56
Speaker 2: I was amazed at how I don't know if nobody
15:00
Speaker 2: knew what to do, but nobody, nobody came forward. Like
15:05
Speaker 2: I literally had to swear at someone to get someone
15:08
Speaker 2: to help me. And that's, you know, because who's standing
15:12
Speaker 2: next to someone when they die. Very few people, you know,
15:16
Speaker 2: not in not where we live anyway, you know, and
15:19
Speaker 2: then so you're right, people just don't know what to do. Yeah,
15:23
Speaker 2: and normally comfortable, competent, you know, pretty adaptable, flexible people
15:30
Speaker 2: fucking freeze in certain circumstances. Do you know.
15:34
Speaker 3: Well, firstly, I'm really sorry that you had that experience,
15:37
Speaker 3: but also you are incredible because you have literally saved
15:42
Speaker 3: Mark's life there in that in that scenario. So he's
15:45
Speaker 3: alive because of the intervention that you made, and that's
15:50
Speaker 3: that's pretty incredible and definitely something worth recognizing. But it's
15:55
Speaker 3: it's funny how other people respond in a situation where
15:58
Speaker 3: they feel deeply uncomfortable. There's been some really interesting research
16:03
Speaker 3: that's looked at how when in an emergency situation, if
16:07
Speaker 3: there's somebody that's already intervening, other people will stand by,
16:11
Speaker 3: will be less likely to come forward and help because
16:13
Speaker 3: they think it's dealt with. And it's really challenging because
16:17
Speaker 3: in that kind of circumstance, actually you need all the
16:19
Speaker 3: hands that you can get right, You need that help
16:22
Speaker 3: and you need that support, and some of it comes
16:24
Speaker 3: from a lack of confidence, I think. And it's interesting,
16:26
Speaker 3: you know, because we almost had kind of the opposite
16:29
Speaker 3: problem in the fire service. So there was. One of
16:32
Speaker 3: the things that we introduced when we were doing all
16:36
Speaker 3: of the research and the policy changes on the back
16:38
Speaker 3: of the research was some work around something that we
16:41
Speaker 3: term operational discretion, and that's the flexibility to recognize when
16:46
Speaker 3: a policy doesn't apply that you will actually do what
16:51
Speaker 3: you think needs to be done, used your professional judgment
16:54
Speaker 3: to do whatever you need to do in that circumstance.
16:57
Speaker 3: And there were some incidents, some really high profile incidents
17:01
Speaker 3: that we had in the UK where people had died
17:04
Speaker 3: because people were One of the contributing factors part of me.
17:08
Speaker 3: One of the contributing factors was that everybody was so
17:12
Speaker 3: focused on sticking to the policy that the policy wouldn't
17:16
Speaker 3: have worked for that situation. Sticking to the policy actually
17:19
Speaker 3: made the outcome worse. There was one called there was
17:23
Speaker 3: one in Gosden Mine where a mine shaft had collapsed
17:28
Speaker 3: and a lady had fallen down the mine shaft and
17:32
Speaker 3: was trapped down there for a considerable amount of time,
17:35
Speaker 3: and one of the incident commanders, the fire commanders, wanted
17:39
Speaker 3: to adapt some equipment to be able to get them out,
17:42
Speaker 3: and another disagreed because it was outside of policy and
17:45
Speaker 3: stopped it all and insisted on waiting for the mine rescue,
17:50
Speaker 3: and the woman ended up being trapped down there for
17:52
Speaker 3: so long that one of the contributing factors to her
17:54
Speaker 3: death was hypothermia. Now it would be wrong to say
17:57
Speaker 3: it was solely because of the the delay caused by
18:02
Speaker 3: that or sticking rigidly to the policy, but what was
18:05
Speaker 3: talked about by the judge afterwards when they were looking
18:09
Speaker 3: at her death is that that was one of the
18:10
Speaker 3: inflexibility was one of the contributing factors. So it's funny
18:14
Speaker 3: because if you were not in a uniform, you'd grab
18:17
Speaker 3: whatever you could grab and you would do what you
18:20
Speaker 3: could to try to make it work right. But as
18:22
Speaker 3: soon as you put up that uniform, you have that
18:24
Speaker 3: different responsibility, that different level of accountability, and the judgments
18:29
Speaker 3: I think, and you know, the judgment that you would
18:33
Speaker 3: have after an event once you're wearing that uniform and
18:36
Speaker 3: representing one of the services is far greater than a
18:40
Speaker 3: member of the public would have if they were just
18:42
Speaker 3: trying to do their best to help out. Of the
18:45
Speaker 3: things that we introduced was this concept of operational discretion,
18:48
Speaker 3: where if you recognize that adhering strictly to the policy,
18:52
Speaker 3: either is going to make it worse because that happens sometimes,
18:56
Speaker 3: or the policy it's such a novel situation that the
18:59
Speaker 3: policy does apply, then it gives that kind of flexibility
19:02
Speaker 3: to choose what to do in that circumstance. And we
19:05
Speaker 3: did some research on this, and we were looking at
19:08
Speaker 3: the impact of stress and uncertainty on decision making when
19:12
Speaker 3: applying operational discretion. That was our kind of driver for it,
19:15
Speaker 3: and we gave fire commanders two scenarios. One was really
19:20
Speaker 3: straightforward runn of the mail. It was a high rise
19:22
Speaker 3: fire where they knew what to do, they knew what
19:24
Speaker 3: to expect them, was a super superclear policy, no need
19:26
Speaker 3: to deviate. And the other one was similar to this.
19:29
Speaker 3: It was a mind shaft. It had collapsed, a sinkhole, sorry,
19:33
Speaker 3: it had collapsed, and there was a group of children
19:35
Speaker 3: stuck at the bottom and it was outside of the
19:37
Speaker 3: reach of their normal equipment. So you would have to
19:39
Speaker 3: use operational discretion. And we took measures of stress as well,
19:45
Speaker 3: and rather than just relying on self report, because you
19:47
Speaker 3: could ask a firefighter with a mushroom cloud behind them
19:50
Speaker 3: how they are and they'd be like, yeah, everything's fine,
19:51
Speaker 3: I got this under control. Even if the heart beating
19:54
Speaker 3: tens of the dozerts. So we took blood samples so
19:58
Speaker 3: that we could measure it was actually a leukocyte response
20:02
Speaker 3: rather than a single measure of corters are. We were
20:04
Speaker 3: looking more holistically at a range of measures, because when
20:07
Speaker 3: you experience stress, your cells respond differently, and so we
20:12
Speaker 3: looked at at the leukocyte response to give us a
20:15
Speaker 3: better measure. And what we found is the more uncertain
20:18
Speaker 3: the situation, the higher the stress levels. Not surprising there,
20:22
Speaker 3: but the more uncertain the situation and the higher the
20:24
Speaker 3: stress levels, the more certain people were to reach for
20:27
Speaker 3: a set of rules even when they didn't apply. And
20:31
Speaker 3: so this was a really interesting one because we all
20:33
Speaker 3: do this sometimes when we're making a decision under uncertainty
20:36
Speaker 3: or we're not quite sure what to do and it's pressured,
20:39
Speaker 3: and we'll reach for something that might feel familiar because
20:42
Speaker 3: it gives us that sense of security, but it might
20:44
Speaker 3: not actually be the right thing for that set of circumstances.
20:48
Speaker 3: So my advice to people, whether they're in the fire
20:50
Speaker 3: service or not, is if you are making a decision
20:52
Speaker 3: or under the decision under those circumstances and you find
20:55
Speaker 3: yourself reaching for something that makes you feel better, or
20:58
Speaker 3: something that gives you that sense of comfort, or something
21:00
Speaker 3: that's familiar to you. Just pause and just double check
21:05
Speaker 3: your assumptions to make sure that it's actually delivering the
21:08
Speaker 3: outcome that you're hoping it's going to deliver.
21:10
Speaker 2: That makes so much sense, And I can understand why
21:13
Speaker 2: people do that, because they're protecting themselves because if this
21:16
Speaker 2: turns out bad, it's not my fault. It's the rules, yeah,
21:20
Speaker 2: exactly right. And if I kind of be the rebel
21:25
Speaker 2: and it turns out bad, it's my fault, whereas it
21:29
Speaker 2: might have been bad anyway.
21:30
Speaker 3: You know, it's such a litigious society now as well,
21:33
Speaker 3: and you know, you see the way that incidents where
21:37
Speaker 3: people we're not automatons in a uniform. We're human beings.
21:40
Speaker 3: You know, we're real people at the end of the day.
21:43
Speaker 3: And when you see the way that people are judged
21:46
Speaker 3: after an event who might have got it wrong, but
21:48
Speaker 3: they've gone in genuinely wanting to do their best, you know,
21:51
Speaker 3: it could be really difficult then for someone to find
21:53
Speaker 3: the courage to take a leap to do the thing
21:55
Speaker 3: that they think needs to be done without that security
21:58
Speaker 3: of a set of rules to wrap around them. I
22:00
Speaker 3: get it.
22:02
Speaker 2: Now. I know you don't have any spare time because
22:04
Speaker 2: you're an author and you're a mum, and you're a
22:07
Speaker 2: dog mum, and you're a wife, and you're a bloody
22:10
Speaker 2: superstar at fifty things, and you're a researcher and you're
22:12
Speaker 2: a fire fighter and you've got a thousand test subjects
22:16
Speaker 2: whenever you want them. But you definitely should have your
22:19
Speaker 2: own podcast.
22:20
Speaker 1: Ah, you'd be so good.
22:23
Speaker 2: Like you're such a brilliant communicator and storyteller, and you
22:27
Speaker 2: you're such a good science communicator too, because you explain
22:32
Speaker 2: complicated stuff in an uncomplicated way or what can be
22:36
Speaker 2: complicated stuff.
22:38
Speaker 1: Because we're a largely.
22:40
Speaker 2: Non academic you know, we've got a percentage of academics
22:43
Speaker 2: that listen, but you know it's not an academic show
22:47
Speaker 2: per se.
22:47
Speaker 1: And so my constant, or my not.
22:51
Speaker 2: Every episode, but a lot of episodes, I'm trying to
22:53
Speaker 2: figure out, how do we say this, and how do
22:55
Speaker 2: we navigate this conversation and make it you know, interesting,
22:58
Speaker 2: but also really relevant stable so people can do something
23:01
Speaker 2: with it. And you just do that automatically. It's a
23:05
Speaker 2: real gift and a real skill so well done you.
23:08
Speaker 1: It's amazing.
23:09
Speaker 3: Thank you.
23:10
Speaker 1: Tell me about before we go, tell me about the book.
23:13
Speaker 1: So your book is called The Heat of the Moment.
23:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right to tell us about that, did you?
23:19
Speaker 1: Is that your one and only book?
23:22
Speaker 3: I've got another one coming out in March. But the
23:24
Speaker 3: Heat of the Moment I wanted to take something that
23:29
Speaker 3: would talk about the way that we make decisions under pressure,
23:33
Speaker 3: because it doesn't matter what the circumstances are, you know,
23:36
Speaker 3: our brains are going to work in a similar way.
23:40
Speaker 3: So I took everything that we'd learned from more than
23:43
Speaker 3: twenty years of firefighting and more than a decade of
23:45
Speaker 3: research about how we make decisions in the heat of
23:49
Speaker 3: the moment, when we're experiencing pressure, and I wanted to
23:52
Speaker 3: talk about it in a way that could be then
23:54
Speaker 3: applied to everyday life. So each chapter talks about a
23:58
Speaker 3: specific aspect of decision making with it gut decision making,
24:01
Speaker 3: whether it's you know, the way that you develop your
24:04
Speaker 3: situational awareness, whether it's the way that you communicate all
24:07
Speaker 3: of these concepts. And it opens with an incident that
24:10
Speaker 3: I've been to and so that you can see that
24:12
Speaker 3: part of that aspect of how your brain is working
24:17
Speaker 3: actually kind of at a real life incident in reality,
24:22
Speaker 3: and then I unpick the research that's relevant to it,
24:25
Speaker 3: and then I kind of talk about how it applies
24:27
Speaker 3: to everyday life as well. So, yeah, that was a
24:31
Speaker 3: real That was a real labor of love to write.
24:34
Speaker 3: It was a real joy. Actually, it's just nice to
24:37
Speaker 3: be able to share what we've done with the broad
24:39
Speaker 3: or audience because I think, you know, there are some
24:41
Speaker 3: really important lessons that we've learned in the fire service,
24:44
Speaker 3: and they've been learned through a lot of pain, as
24:46
Speaker 3: I described earlier on. And so isn't it great that
24:49
Speaker 3: you can share that with as many people as possible
24:51
Speaker 3: and not just limit it to those that were the
24:53
Speaker 3: same color perform as you.
24:56
Speaker 2: Do you think that being able to self regulate in
25:00
Speaker 2: the middle of the mayhem and you know, make decisions
25:04
Speaker 2: and stay relatively calm. Do you think that we spoke
25:12
Speaker 2: about it a little bit before, but do you think
25:14
Speaker 2: that is more innate? Like I feel like there are
25:17
Speaker 2: people that are just better than that. And also my
25:20
Speaker 2: part B of that question is are people more anxious
25:25
Speaker 2: now than.
25:27
Speaker 1: Thirty years ago? Or we just more aware of anxiety?
25:30
Speaker 3: Sabrina really good question. I think that it's I think
25:35
Speaker 3: that it's a mixture of nature and nurture every single time.
25:39
Speaker 3: And I think that it can be developed as well
25:42
Speaker 3: by what you expose yourself to and how you respond
25:44
Speaker 3: to that exposure and how willing you are to put
25:47
Speaker 3: yourself in those uncomfortable situations like we talked about. And
25:51
Speaker 3: the anxiety question is a really good one. I think
25:54
Speaker 3: that I don't think people are more anxious than they
25:56
Speaker 3: are today than they were before. I think they just
25:59
Speaker 3: wont allowed to show it before because of the societal
26:02
Speaker 3: pressures that people were experiencing. I think the world was
26:06
Speaker 3: super different, wasn't it. So I think there's that element.
26:09
Speaker 3: I mean, there are things that make us feel anxious
26:12
Speaker 3: today that weren't around before. Exposure or social media, I
26:18
Speaker 3: think is a key one. I mean, I can have
26:20
Speaker 3: firefighters at a job and the job will be uploaded
26:23
Speaker 3: onto YouTube by someone with their camera phone before they've
26:26
Speaker 3: even packed up and left the scene. You know, so
26:31
Speaker 3: previously it would never be like that. You never had
26:34
Speaker 3: to kind of worry about those kind of things. So
26:36
Speaker 3: I think my point is if someone does make a mistake,
26:39
Speaker 3: it's usually recorded and there forever and you've seen the
26:43
Speaker 3: way that people respond publicly to people who've made mistakes,
26:47
Speaker 3: and it's kind of huge debate, isn't there around cancel
26:50
Speaker 3: culture and things like that? So I think there is.
26:55
Speaker 3: I think whilst judgments would have been the same across
26:58
Speaker 3: the ages, I think that they are a lot more
27:02
Speaker 3: public now than they perhaps were previously. So it's really difficult,
27:06
Speaker 3: isn't it to compare times to say whether people were
27:09
Speaker 3: more anxious thirty years ago or whether they're more anxious today,
27:13
Speaker 3: because I think the context is so different that it's
27:15
Speaker 3: really tricky to kind of weigh everything up and go
27:18
Speaker 3: one or the other. But I certainly think that there
27:21
Speaker 3: are things today that can make you feel anxious that
27:23
Speaker 3: you didn't have thirty years ago. I think we have
27:27
Speaker 3: the luxury today of being able to be really open
27:30
Speaker 3: about being anxious, which means you can deal with it
27:33
Speaker 3: better than you might have been able to do thirty
27:35
Speaker 3: years ago. So there's definitely a silver lining there.
27:39
Speaker 2: All Right, We've got to go, because I feel like
27:41
Speaker 2: I'm dragging you you on, but just I'm so interested
27:45
Speaker 2: in your stuff. I want to ask you two quick
27:47
Speaker 2: questions and I'm promised we'll go so number one is
27:50
Speaker 2: so you're all about excellence, high performance, performing under pressure,
27:54
Speaker 2: you know, being the best you can be. And are
27:57
Speaker 2: there any other fire serve around the world that you
28:02
Speaker 2: look at in any country or it might just anywhere
28:06
Speaker 2: in the world where you go, they're the best, they
28:10
Speaker 2: are amazing for these reasons.
28:14
Speaker 3: Oh, I think that's a great question. And I think
28:16
Speaker 3: there are different fire services that are really excellent at
28:19
Speaker 3: different things. And sometimes you have the persona of the
28:26
Speaker 3: biggest and the best, and you hear about, you know,
28:29
Speaker 3: the great ones around the world and things I won't
28:32
Speaker 3: mention any names, but when you actually scratch the surface,
28:36
Speaker 3: they don't always turn out to be as shiny as
28:39
Speaker 3: you might have thought they were outside. So I think
28:42
Speaker 3: there's real value if you are looking for the best
28:47
Speaker 3: in looking really specifically at what you want to see
28:49
Speaker 3: the best of and not stopping until you've turned over
28:53
Speaker 3: all the stones that you can to find it, because
28:55
Speaker 3: the places that you might find it might just surprise you.
29:00
Speaker 2: And do you do you ever look across the pond
29:05
Speaker 2: with any curiosity on our Australian summers with the bloody
29:08
Speaker 2: bushfires that we we seem to be having more and
29:11
Speaker 2: more of that have been devastating in the last few
29:14
Speaker 2: years over here.
29:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have been utterly devastating, and your first responders
29:21
Speaker 3: I have a huge amount of admiration for the way
29:23
Speaker 3: that they've tackled them, because those kind of incidents are relentless.
29:27
Speaker 3: They're not the kind of incidence that you go to
29:29
Speaker 3: and a couple of hours later you're back at the
29:31
Speaker 3: station and its job and not you know, it's all finished.
29:34
Speaker 3: Is day after day, week after week with those kind
29:37
Speaker 3: of incidents, and they are exhausting. So your first responders,
29:40
Speaker 3: I have to say, I think are exemplary in the
29:43
Speaker 3: way that they have They've dealt with that and shown
29:45
Speaker 3: incredible resilience and courage in the face of doing so,
29:49
Speaker 3: as have been your communities actually who I've seen a
29:52
Speaker 3: huge amount of resilience from having gone through those incidents
29:56
Speaker 3: and they are utterly devastating. And one of the things
30:00
Speaker 3: that we are thinking about more and more now as
30:03
Speaker 3: fire services is the impact of climate change on weather
30:06
Speaker 3: related incidents. You know, we've been having some awful wildfires
30:10
Speaker 3: here in the UK, not like not to the extent
30:14
Speaker 3: that you do in Australia, because our demography is very different,
30:18
Speaker 3: you know, we don't have the same kind of forested
30:21
Speaker 3: areas that you do there and the expanse that you
30:25
Speaker 3: do there, but they have been devastating for the wildlife
30:28
Speaker 3: that we do have here, and they're happening more and
30:31
Speaker 3: more regularly. Same with flooding. So actually thinking about what
30:34
Speaker 3: we can do to prevent those happening in the first place,
30:37
Speaker 3: to really get ahead of that is something that's super
30:40
Speaker 3: important to us, and we're doing a lot of work
30:42
Speaker 3: at the moment in my own fire department looking at
30:44
Speaker 3: how we can kind of improve the work that we
30:48
Speaker 3: do in rural communities to stop those kind of incidents
30:52
Speaker 3: happening in the first place.
30:54
Speaker 1: Yeah.
30:54
Speaker 2: Perfect, well, Sabrina, you're fascinating, you're Grey communicator. We appreciate
31:01
Speaker 2: you having a chat with us on the You project.
31:04
Speaker 2: Thank you, and I want you to come back when
31:06
Speaker 2: your new books out so we can talk about that
31:09
Speaker 2: and stell lots of books for you.
31:11
Speaker 3: Is that all right, my pleasure? It would be great,
31:15
Speaker 3: And it's been an absolute joy to speak to you today,
31:18
Speaker 3: So thank you so much for having me.
31:21
Speaker 1: Absolute pleasure, Melissa, do you like Sabrina.
31:23
Speaker 4: Oh, of course, thank you so much for spending all
31:26
Speaker 4: this time with us. What a privilege to listen to
31:29
Speaker 4: your story. And yeah, I've just been sitting here and all,
31:32
Speaker 4: so thank you very much.
31:34
Speaker 1: Are you crushing hard just a little bit?
31:36
Speaker 2: And I can tell. I can tell because you get
31:39
Speaker 2: that goofy. I love her look on your face. Hey, Sabrina,
31:43
Speaker 2: stay there. We'll say goodbye off air, but thank you
31:46
Speaker 2: so much, and thanks everyone. We appreciate you.