OUR STORY
About Station 8
Brought to you by Dr. Tony Kern
Station 8 comes from good roots. For nearly 20 years, Convergent Performance has been on the front lines of the war on error in high-risk industries. From surgical teams to the cockpits of supersonic fighter jets, the core elements of human performance and personal accountability have been trained and refined. The idea of transferring these proven principles into fire fighting began over a decade ago, when Dr. Kern – the former Assistant Director of Fire and Aviation for the US Forest Service – began to notice a disturbing trend of human error fatalities among professional and volunteer fire fighters.
He realized that fire fighting is different than many other high-risk industries, and that any program designed for them would have to meet them where they are. After multiple iterations and beta tests, the program evolved into a shared learning approach, taught at the fire station and reinforced on everyday runs and emergency responses. We are justifiably proud of the result, and hope you find it to be the professional development and human factors program you have been missing.
Station 8 Fire Fighter Human Factors training is the first comprehensive program designed to be taught by fire fighters in their fire station, without any specialized training requirements for facilitation. Short Station Videos of approximately two minutes are presented by human factors subject matter experts to cover critical points. After viewing the video, a discussion leader uses a Flash Point training card with a case study and several probing questions to draw out experiences and insights from experienced fire fighters, and discuss how the specific lessons on the topic can be employed to provide greater operational effectiveness and safer operations at the local level. Eight “Stations” are thoroughly covered:
- Situational Awareness
- Communication/Teamwork
- Decision Making
- Risk Management
- Leadership/Followership
- Compliance, Professionalism
- Continuous Improvement