Police Officer Osseo Police Department Elk River, Minnesota
This presentation equips dispatchers with essential tools to maintain situational awareness in high-stress, time-sensitive environments. Participants will learn strategies to improve decision-making, enhance critical thinking, and boost problem-solving skills. Key takeaways include the importance of obtaining accurate caller locations, overcoming non-verbal communication challenges, and applying de-escalation tactics.
We will also address situational awareness barriers such as multitasking, task fixation, sensory overload, and stress transference. Dispatchers will gain insights on controlling emotions, extracting unbiased information, and applying best practices for improving communication and responder coordination. This session empowers dispatchers to excel in their critical roles.
Learning Objectives:
Recognize and Mitigate Human Errors: Participants will be able to identify common types of human error, including slips in judgment, memory lapses, and flawed decision-making, and apply strategies to minimize their occurrence, even among the most experienced dispatchers.
Develop and Maintain Situational Awareness: Dispatchers will understand the three-step process of situational awareness—perception, understanding, and prediction—and learn how to overcome barriers like multitasking, sensory conflict, and task fixation that impair decision-making under stress.
Enhance Dynamic Decision-Making in High-Stress Environments: Attendees will improve their ability to make quick, high-risk, high-consequence decisions by recognizing situational awareness barriers and using real-time strategies to anticipate outcomes and reduce errors.
