Courage Attitudes Related to First Responder Performance

Few alternative and complementary health practices (ACHP) consider the important role that personality characteristics play in work performance. Whereas research has considered the value of ACHP to performance among first responders such as police and fire fighters, little research has been done investigating the role of attitudes such as personal courage in improving performance. For example, firefighting is an unusually stressful profession, including not only threats to life and limb, but also uneventful, boring downtime. A special, related problem is the high dropout rate of recruits during initial training periods. This poster suggests that ACHP should (a) be incorporated into training public health and safety personnel such as fire fighters and, (b) include training of courage attitudes in helping firefighting personnel manage ongoing and training stresses, so that performance can be even more effective. The first study shows, among firefighters who have already completed the training period, the hypothesized relationship between courage attitudes performance. The second study shows that courage attitudes, measured before the training period began, predicted better performance. This poster suggests that courage attitudes may be an important factor in effective firefighter performance in addition to any other ACHP that could enhance performance. The topic of enhancing the efficacy of public safety workers like fire fighters is especially important given the growing need for competent and skilled first responders in public health and safety settings.