Stories to live by: Using narratives to promote occupational health and safety behaviors to firefighters

Influencing firefighters to alter their behavior in a way that reduces the risk of disease or injury, or increases the chance of health and well-being are important public health objectives. Finding an engaging and persuasive way to share knowledge is particularly valuable for adults involved in occupations that require a high level of knowledge to maintain health and safety. Narratives have exceptional power to persuade and affect peoples' decisions and research has shown that using stories related specifically to occupational health and safety can be effective at changing beliefs, attitudes and behavior. Nevertheless, fire service occupational health and safety training is often dominated by didactic instruction of facts and rules instead of narratives that reveal meanings and values in the context in which they are told. As adult learners, firefighters are less inclined to change their attitude by being told what to do or how to do it, but rather prefer to learn by the observation of human behavior. Thus, fire service occupational health and safety education might be more effective if it includes stories about critical situations that firefighters might confront while working on the fire ground and the appropriate responses to those situations. Data taken from a larger study provides information of the cognitive and emotional reactions narratives engender and insight that can possibly help those involved with occupational health and safety education develop narrative messages that are coherent, informative, memorable and ultimately persuasive.