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Non‐technical skills for emergency incident management teams: A literature review
Author(s) -
Hayes Peter,
Bearman Chris,
Butler Philip,
Owen Christine
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of contingencies and crisis management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.007
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1468-5973
pISSN - 0966-0879
DOI - 10.1111/1468-5973.12341
Subject(s) - emergency management , variety (cybernetics) , set (abstract data type) , coping (psychology) , crisis management , psychology , knowledge management , process management , computer science , operations management , engineering , political science , artificial intelligence , psychiatry , law , programming language
Every year, incident management teams (IMTs) coordinate the response to hundreds of emergency events across Australasia. Larger scale emergencies such as a storms, floods, wildfires, oil spills and chemical explosions can place a lot of pressure on an IMT. Non‐technical skills play a central role in the performance of these teams. This article reviewed the broader non‐technical skills (NTS) literature before focusing on the NTS required for emergency management. It was found that most NTS frameworks share four to five common skill categories, although there were greater differences at the element and behavioural marker level. A variety of issues were identified in the literature that highlight that emergency management is very different from other domains where NTS systems have been developed. The literature on NTS in conjunction with this set of issues was used to develop a proposed NTS framework for emergency IMTs. This framework comprises 7 skill categories (i.e. communication, coordination, cooperation, decision‐making, situation awareness, leadership and coping, stress and fatigue management). The 7 skills can be further delineated into 16 elements and 44 behavioural markers. The framework provides a prototype that can form the basis for further research in this area.