Health study with UMD finds lieutenants at higher stress levels

This past December Michael Baker, lead instructor and acting coordinator of the Incident Command Simulation Center, formed a partnership with the University of Maryland School of Public Health, Department of Kinesiology over the past six months to examine mental stress of firefighters during simulated firefighting. The study was an attempt to determine new techniques to reduce stress of officers during high stress incidents.

Baker, who has been an instructor at the Institute for over 35 years, has been researching line of duty deaths (LODD) in structure fires over the last four years and has noticed a trend of fatalities among new and acting officers. “There are many questions as to why they are involved that can’t be answered quickly,” said Baker.

In June, the stress level of ten lieutenants and three battalion chiefs from the metropolitan area were evaluated during two simulated incidents. Each officer was assigned incidents of different levels of difficulty. The easy condition was a single home dwelling with a kitchen fire, with no civilians or firefighters at risk. The hard condition was a garden-style apartment, with multiple civilian casualties and firefighter mayday.

While performing the computerized firefighting command simulation tasks, sensors were attached with an elastic cap placed on each participant’s scalp for recording brain activity (electroencephalography – EEG). Their heart rates were also measured. The data indicated differing stress levels and brain activity between new and experienced officers.

Lieutenants displayed high levels of attentional engagement in both easy and hard conditions. Although the lieutenant’s mental workload was similar, the chiefs displayed lower attentional focus in the easy condition, and an increase in focus to the hard condition. While still being lower than the lieutenants, the chiefs did not need to utilize higher attentional focus in the easy condition. When performing the hard conditions, the chiefs did not need to focus as hard to maintain performance.

“Our hope is that we can find ways to train less experienced officers using fireground simulations to increase their experience levels before real incidents occur,” said Baker.

The School of Public Health and MFRI plan to explore other issues with further study and continue this joint study in the fall.

Photo: Battalion Chief Michael Lambert performs a simulation in the Simulation Incident Command Center as UMD student looks on.

SIMULATION STUDY GRAPHS

An elevation of heart rate progressing from easy to hard condition from both groups. However, the chiefs exhibited slightly lower heart rate compared to the lieutenants.

The chiefs exhibited lower attentional focus compared to the lieutenants. While chiefs did exhibit an increase in attentional focus from the easy to hard condition.