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Taking Charge: Guidance Notes for First Responders in an Emergency

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Taking Charge: A Guide Being a first-responder is an incredibly challenging yet rewarding career choice. Facing possible death in the hope of saving life is as noble of a cause as it gets. Fortunately, with proper training, methods to make proper decisions in highly time sensitive moments. Also, allocating resources properly to address the situation at hand is necessary in order to best utilize these resources for success. Typically, unlike the military, first-responders operate on a majority rules basis. Having authority or taking authority to act is a necessary step to leading a team, and therefore having a strong sense of decision-making is critical to securing the confidence of one's first-responder team. There are different scenarios for making decisions as a first-responder, including imminent disaster, medical emergency, or a search and rescue mission. Making decisions based on the problem at hand is a situational awareness exercise in data gathering and decision-making. Allocating a limited amount of resources to any task is a key component to the overall accomplishment of a task. Some of the best ways to communicate in crisis situations is to evaluate threat and event status situations. Managing rumors and perceptions of those involved, in other words, trying to clear one's head for the task at hand.(Flanagan, 2011) Providing time-sensitive information to tasks at hand, trying to make the clearest decision before finalizing action. Mitigating real-time risks

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