Download Your Brain on Dispatch – Stress Inoculation and Reality Based

Your Brain on Dispatch – Stress Inoculation and Reality Based Training
(Author’s Note: The terms ‘dispatch’ and ‘dispatcher’ are synonymous for all Public Safety Telecommunicators, call
takers, etc… or those who do a combination of those duties. The stress response is applicable to all.)
“Forewarned is forearmed.” (Lt. Col. Grossman, 2008) So how does the 911 industry ‘forearm’ and
prepare for the inevitability of stress? Learning, understanding and being conscious of stress is half the
battle; the other half is how we view and prepare our employees for it. If we choose to view stress as a
disease, we can vaccinate against it by training properly and prepping new employees appropriately.
Most military boot camps and law enforcement academies prep their cadets for the real thing by using a
series of tools in order to inoculate them against the stresses they will encounter in the course of their
daily job functions; they practice shooting, handcuffing, driving, etc. The 911 industry can do the same
thing and use similar tools based on the stresses our people encounter in the course of their daily job
functions.
What is the emotion new employees and trainees experience the most? Think back to your first days as
a 911 operator. They were probably something akin to fear and worry. Emotions contribute significantly
to our stress response, and these two are particularly powerful. Frequently we see trainees fixate, to the
point of obsession, on whether or not they will be able to do the job. Questions such as, “Will I
remember what do to in a pursuit?”, “Will I freeze up when I hear sirens or an officer yelling on the air?”
plague new employees. And the longer they go without an officer involved shooting or a pursuit, the
more fixated and worried they can become.
West Point Colonel Jack Beach, Ph.D. described emotions as having cognitive and physiological
components. In order to combat the cognitive portion of emotion, we need to eliminate the element of
surprise or unknown and raise the self-confidence of our employees. “The fundamental concept [of
stress acclimatization] is that prior success under stressful conditions acclimatizes you to similar
situations and promotes future success,” states Grossman (2008). This is why reality-based or simulation
training is so highly recommended. By exposing them to a scenario in a real-life setting initially, the
trainee can move past the fixation and know what to expect of themselves and the situation; the
element of surprise now gone.
Reality-based training is the best way to ‘fight like you train, train like you fight’ and included in most
professional training programs in one aspect or another. They are considered high value activities and
used in sports, the military, medical fields, emergency departments, etc. as exercises, drills, and
simulators. Reality-based training is credited with things such as reducing error rates during laparoscopic
surgery (Ahlberg, 2007). Unfortunately, the intricacies and details of reality-based training are far too
involved to explore in this article alone. For more information, see the book, “Training at the Speed of
Life” by Kenneth Murray.
To this point, if the training has been successful, a dispatcher will be able to do what is necessary in the
moment reflexively. It will all come from the midbrain and conditioning. The initial ‘rush’ will be
expected, and the dispatcher will be able to move through it and use it to improve their performance. A
great example of this is when I ran simulated trainings for new dispatchers with the Washington State
Patrol. I knew we had been successful when trainees would ask for pursuits and the other ‘fun’ stuff.
They had worked through their initial reaction and now expected and almost relied on it as a tool to
help them focus, hear better, and get the job done.
Based on the research of I. P. Pavlov and B. F. Skimmer, there are two basic types of conditioning;
classical and operant. Classical conditioning occurs when a specific stimulus produces a reflexive
behavior. For example, upon hearing sirens in their ear, a dispatcher will immediately stop what they are
doing, sit up straight and move to their keyboard in anticipation of whatever their officer is going to say.
Operant conditioning is the control of behavior based on stimuli associated with reinforcement or
punishment. Without realizing it, CTOs use many aspects of operant conditioning in order to modify the
behavior of their trainee. If a new dispatcher is corrected each time they forget to sign off the time on a
transmission, the ‘punishment’ or aversive stimuli of being corrected in public will soon have them
signing off the time for every transmission. The most effective form of training is one that is realistic, as
already discussed, but includes an element for providing immediate feedback.
The ultimate goal of reality based training and stress inoculation is to move our telecommunicators past
fear, surprise, and other stressors, to the point of muscle memory or ‘auto-pilot’. This is only achieved
through extensive, repetitive practice. Think about how many driver’s or wants returns you had to read
and train your eye to before it became second nature. Once you had it down though, you could probably
read them back in your sleep. This is the stage we want our employees to reach. In crisis and when the
body is stressed, you will do what you’ve been programmed (or trained) to do (Grossman, 2008). The
reptilian brain will take over which is why practice and realism will help battle stress on a cognitive level,
making employees more successful.
But what about addressing the physiological effects of the stress response? If you remember, the body
cannot tell if it is being thrown into the stress response because of a mastodon attack or you’re late for
work. It is going to respond the same way, by dumping chemicals into the blood stream and shunting
blood towards the most vital organs; of which your frontal lobe is not a part. So how do we restore
blood to the rational part of our brain? Breathe. As simple and anticlimactic as it sounds, tactical
breathing (or combat breathing) is the best chance a person has to combat the stress response on a
physiological level. Breathing and blinking are the only two parts of autonomic nervous system you can
consciously control. Therefore, the bridge between your stress response and parasympathetic ‘backlash’
is breathe (Grossman, 2008). Increased intake of oxygen restores blood flow to the neo-cortex, helps
slow your heart rate, and keeps dispatchers from sounding like Minnie Mouse when they key up. This
technique is being taught in the military and most law enforcement academies, where the ability to
engage rational thought during a stress response can mean life or death. Although tactical breathing
sounds really remarkable and ground-breaking, it’s not. As Ingersoll (2012) points out in his article, “It
has been applied in various realms, such as martial arts, sharpshooting and Lamaze, for generations.”
The technique is to inhale to a count of four, hold to a count of four, and then exhale to a count of four;
taking deep, belly breaths. The more we practice, like anything else, the better we’ll be at it. Teaching
this inoculation tool from the beginning of their career, as part of reality-based training, will only benefit
our employees as it moves to muscle memory during any stress response.
Just like your flu shot has to be renewed annually to be effective, so does your inoculation to stress. It
must be practiced and kept up to date. As Richard Marcinko stated, “The more you sweat in training, the
less you will bleed in battle.” Let’s make a move, as an industry, to adequately prepare our people for
their careers in 911. Let’s include stress in our hiring process, and outfit our trainees with the right
armor in our training programs. Gavin de Becker said, “Ideally, the [wild] brain helps us to receive the
most powerful asset nature has given us: intuition. The root of the word intuition, tuere, means “to
guard and to protect,” and that’s exactly what it can do for us – particularly if prepared with accurate
and relevant information” (Grossman, 2008). As 911 leaders we have the distinct privilege and
opportunity to prepare our people the right way for this remarkable job.
Ahlberg, G., Enochsson, L., Gallagher, A. G., Hedman, L., Hogman, C., McClusky, D. A., ... & Arvidsson,
D. (2007). Proficiency-based virtual reality training significantly reduces the error rate for residents during
their first 10 laparoscopic cholecystectomies. The American journal of surgery, 193(6), 797-804.
Ingersoll, A. (2012, November 20). Ind. Responders Use Breathing Tactic to Reduce Stress |
EMSWorld.com. Retrieved September 04, 2016, from
http://www.emsworld.com/news/10831902/ind-responders-use-breathing-tactic-to-reduce-stress
Grossman, D., & Christensen, L. W. (2008). On combat: The psychology and physiology of deadly
conflict in war and in peace. Millstadt, IL: Warrior Science Pub.
Grossman, D. (1996). On killing: The psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society.
Boston: Little, Brown.