Articles

TASA ID: 321

Police officers today deal with many issues. They face danger every day and it is compounded with the current social issues in our society, including the animosity towards police officers and the calls for defunding the police. In this social climate, they have to be more aware than ever of how they respond to situations that may call for utilizing force. It gets even trickier when the officer(s) has to respond to a situation involving individuals that may reasonably be in crisis. These situations necessitate an officer to make immediate and difficult judgments about the mental state and intent of the individual. Since the goal is to effectively resolve the situation with as little violence as possible, officers are often called upon to use special skills, techniques and abilities beyond the “use of force” training they normally receive in order to effectively resolve the situation. They must de-escalate the situation safely for all individuals involved within defined safety priorities, using the laws of the jurisdiction to guide them.

TASA ID: 9075

I’m a psychologist who has devoted my career to traffic safety, in particular fleet safety.  Two psychological laws of human behavior are the Law of Individual Differences and the Law of Behavioral Consistency (Holland, 1975).  In any group of people, such as a fleet of drivers, one can expect wide differences in behavioral tendencies.  Psychological differences most relevant to safe driving include sensation-seeking, risk perception, impulsivity, and conscientiousness (i.e., obeying rules).  At the same time, each individual’s behavioral tendencies are likely to stay remarkably consistent over time and across various situations.  Indeed, the psychological definition of personality is behavioral consistency over time and across situations.  Future behavior and risk can be predicted based on past behaviors and events.  That’s why we screen fleet drivers for their driving histories and more broadly for their personal histories in other areas of their lives.

Fleet managers should think positively and seek to recognize and reward safe driving and loyal service.  Yet one must be alert for red flags signaling risk.  One bad driver can damage the reputation and even the viability of a whole fleet.  Among those red flags are safety belt non-use and involvement in single-vehicle crashes such as rollovers and run-off-road.

TASA ID: 9075

Driver fatigue is a persistent safety risk, especially for commercial drivers and other fleet drivers who may be driving at night and/or for long distances.  Falling asleep-at-the-wheel (AATW) is the most dangerous fatigue risk.  A 3-4 second highway “microsleep” means a football field of unguided vehicle motion.  AATW crashes usually occur when drivers nod off and then drift off the road where they strike a fixed object or perhaps roll down an embankment.  Such crashes are often severe.  In fact, fatigue involvement in fatal crashes is five times that of minor crashes (FMCSA, 2014; Tefft, 2012).  In addition to human risks, AATW crashes can be high-liability.  Truck driver AATW cases have resulted in multi-million dollar “nuclear verdicts” when 80,000 lb. trucks strike passenger cars one-twentieth of their size.

Below are 39 ways that these crash risks can be reduced.  A bonus is that many of the same practices reducing driver drowsiness also boost overall human health, well-being and performance.  The first 18 are individual behaviors to promote in fatigue education programs.  The remaining 21 are organizational policies and practices which foster those same positive behaviors and outcomes.

TASA ID: 12689

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we offer our third article for this journal on handling emergency situations involving mass exposure contaminates [1][2]. One of us (Scaglione) has also authored a book speaking to proactive event prevention and effective resolution [3]. In the pages that follow, we provide an Emergency Preparedness Readiness Checklist that can serve as a roadmap for security executives to follow for more effective disaster management, and we expand on the checklist. We offer guidance on protecting hospital staff, patients, and visitors from becoming contaminated, and we address risk assessment engineering and design, proactive risk exposure mitigation, and innovative recovery strategies for moving forward once emergencies
have passed.

TASA ID: 16893

Surgical errors happen every day, and lead to numerous types of medical malpractice cases. Most surgical errors are simple things that could have been prevented if all of the members of the operating room team were on the “same page”. Communication in a hectic room with multiple things going on at the same time can often be the root of surgical errors that lead to patient injury.

That is why the Joint Commission for Accreditation on Healthcare Organizations (JACHO) implemented a multi-step practice called “the universal protocol” back in 2003 that is the standard for surgery today. The goal is to perform the right surgery on right site and on the right patient. This requires the surgical team to start implementing this standard from the pre-operative area, then onto surgery.