“One, two, three!”: Coordinating and projecting simultaneous start and end of joint actions in drills of rescue activities in mass casualty incidents

Abstract

This paper investigates how interprofessional emergency teams manage to achieve simultaneous start (and end) of a joint activity by counting “one, two, three” as a ‘projection device’ during drills of mass casualty incidents (MCIs). Situations are analyzed in which they move an (simulated) injured person onto a stretcher either because the person is trapped under a car or is transferred to a stretcher in the emergency hospital. Counting allows the participants to synchronize several actions, carry out last-minute adjustments, and perform a coordinated action simultaneously, here, on “three.” This is achieved in situations with limited visibility, via the rhythm of counting, and the list organization of the number sequence “One, two, three.” This possibility of projecting relatively precisely the starting point of the joint action contrasts with situations in which counting “One, two, three” is instead used as an orientational frame that suggests the start of the action sometime after “two.”