Active Observation and Situational Awareness...

If you are a HEMS crewmember, I want you to do me a favor and watch a music video. Please look very carefully for the "flub" that one of the band members commits. It's hard to see - but if you try you can catch it. You may need to enlarge the video image to get a good picture.

If you don't see an embedded video, you can access it by clicking here....

After you finish, scroll down and we'll consider what you found.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
So, did you find the mistake?

I confess, there wasn't one. It took WOTE (Walk off the Earth - an awesome cover band from Canada) 26 attempts to get it right. I tricked you. I wanted to point out the difference between passive and active observation, and how this affects our situational awareness - or - knowing what is going on around us at any instant. As you can see - active observation is harder than passive observation. Over time it makes one tired, and if you are already tired it is almost impossible. Perhaps the greatest (fictional) example of active observation was Sherlock Holmes. He would walk up to a crime scene and "notice" things that no one else did. We too can increase our ability to "detect," but it takes discipline and practice. And work.

Have you ever had the chance to see a film twice in a short period of time? If you are like me, you probably saw things in the second viewing that you missed the first time. The details jump off the screen the second time around, and why is that? Why do we see things the second time that we missed on our first look. Perhaps it's because we are paying more attention to the key players and the dialogue at first, and the "background" is true to it's name. The second time we watch the film, we already have an idea about what the main characters are going to do and say, so we can divide our attention to the small details - like the painting on the wall of the castle where the zombies are eating the hero.

When we fly in a helo as a crewmember, we need to be watching the film for the second time - picking up the little details that are easy to miss, like how many lights you can see on the ground at night, how far you can see during the day, the new little sound or shimmy or shiver your machine has, or even how I your pilot am just like I always was - or maybe I am not.

(hint - if I am different you better sort out why)

safe flights...