Hazardous Rescue Research Articles

Nurses as Warriors: Challenges and Impacts among Kerala Nurses during Coronavirus Disease-2019 Pandemic.

Introduction:In December 2019, the global outbreak of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) was announced. The pandemic has cast a spotlight like never before on health-care professionals in general, and nurses in particular. Nurses have been dubbed “warriors” by the general public for their determination to provide frontline care to patients with the disease, despite the risk of exposure and a lack of professional resources. The goal of the study was to assess the obstacles and consequences faced by Kerala nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic.Materials and Methods:A cross-sectional study was conducted from January to June 2021 among Kerala nurses. A total of 1630 nurses were chosen using a randomized sampling technique. The data were gathered using a semi-structured self-reported questionnaire. The information was entered into a database and analyzed using SPSS program version 16.0.Results:After analyzing the data, seven themes emerged: (a) love for the profession; (b) frustration for being labeled as “COVID Nurses”; (c) fear of infection and transmission; (d) personal protective equipment uncertainty; (e) workplace safety especially against hospital violence; (f) burnout in nurses; and (g) job stress.Conclusion:Nurses undertook a hazardous rescue mission and played an essential contribution in COVID-19 pandemic. Over the course of intensive work, they underwent significant psychological changes. Nurses burnout and occupational stress must be addressed with effective interventions. In order to mitigate the pandemic, the administration should also promote a healthy workplace and have a positive attitude and harmonious connection with the frontline personnel.

The Concept of Overcommitment in Rescue Operations: Some Theoretical Aspects Based on Empirical Data

ObjectiveStudies on Norwegian avalanche rescue operations have indicated high-stake searching of avalanches during elevated risk conditions. We perceive these characteristics as a sign of overcommitment. The purpose of this study is to explore the concept of overcommitment in Norwegian medical evacuation and rescue operations. How can overcommitment be described and understood as a uniform concept in rescue operations based on empirical data? MethodsIn a qualitative, exploratory study, 9 focus group interviews were conducted with a total of 30 crewmembers from the Norwegian air ambulance service. ResultsIn this first in a series of 2 articles, crewmembers’ reflections on the concept of overcommitment, important factors to consider when balancing risk and benefit in every mission, and a number of causal factors are presented. A definition of overcommitment in the context of rescue activities is presented. ConclusionAir ambulance personnel recognize overcommitment in a variety of situations. They broaden the concept to include both regular, everyday actions and hazardous rescue attempts in extraordinary incidents. The causal factors form recognizable constellations that may offer useful starting points for systems-based counteracting measures. The definition of overcommitment could provide a background for evaluation and learning in the rescue service.

Overcommitment: Management in Helicopter Emergency Medical Services in Norway

ObjectiveOvercommitment in demanding rescue situations may put both rescuers and patients in danger. This study aimed at identifying individual approaches and organizational strategies that counteract instances in which rescuers commit more than is feasible, desirable, expected, recommended, or compellingly necessary. How is overcommitment managed by professional frontline rescuers during hazardous medical evacuation and rescue situations? MethodsIn a qualitative, exploratory study, 9 focus group interviews were conducted with a total of 30 crewmembers from the Norwegian Helicopter Emergency Medical Service. ResultsIn this second article in a series of 2 articles on overcommitment, 12 commitment-moderating factors are presented. Air ambulance personnel pointed at sociological, cognitive, and organizational elements that may influence their degree of commitment in challenging and hazardous rescue situations. ConclusionAir ambulance personnel describe a team-based approach to adjust their level of commitment in medical evacuation and rescue missions. They rely on known, however important, nontechnical skills and organizational measures to combat overcommitment in demanding rescue situations. Some of their approaches to safe performance should be adoptable by other rescue units and less experienced voluntary, not-for-profit, rescue organizations.

Distributed UAV Loss Detection and Auto-replacement Protocol with Guaranteed Properties

Multi-UAV systems are becoming a true reality. They have wide applications in surveillance, search, hazardous rescue and other civil services. Currently, an important challenge is the robust control against UAV failures. In this paper, the distributed UAV loss detection and auto-replacement scheme is discussed. The basic idea is to use the cooperative method to control the multi-UAV system to accomplish the missions. This is achieved by exchanging heartbeats (HBs) and information fusion. We first use the obtained information to detect if one UAV is lost. Subsequently, an auto-replacement logic is used to send a UAV with low priority to occupy the target position or task which was assigned to the lost UAV. Next, a recovery algorithm is proposed when a newly inserted UAV or a lost UAV is recovered from failures. Finally, the proposed scheme is tested by computer simulations and real experiments.

Investigating the Idiotop Paratop Interaction in the Artificial Immune Networks

The artificial immune system is a new computational intelligence technique that has been investigated for the past decade. By reviewing the literature, two observations were found that could affect the network learning process. First, most researchers do not focus on Paratop-Epitop and Paratop-Idiotop interactions within the network. Second, most researchers depict the interaction within the network with all the network components present from the beginning until the end of the learning process. In this research, efforts were devoted to deal with the aforementioned observations. The findings were able to differentiate between interactions in a node within a network, and total interactions in the network. A small simulation problem was used to show the effect of choosing a steady number of antibodies during network interactions. Results showed that a considerable number of interactions could be saved during network learning, which will lead to faster convergence. In conclusion, it is believed that the designed model is ready to be used in many applications. Therefore, it is recommend the use of our model in different applications such as controlling robots in hazardous rescue environment to save human lives.

Rescue Missions and Risk Management: Highly Reliable or Over Committed?

Management in rescue organizations are often faced by conflicts between a spectrum of emergency types, and legal duties to ensure rescuer safety on the incident ground. Drawing on two case studies we consider how rescuers react to cues in order to make sense of unsafe work environments and so make decisions in emergency situations. We explore problems of over‐commitment by rescue workers, together with the nature of its manifestation, and management options for engendering high reliability. We find that the identity and social aspects of ensuring the ‘sensemaking’ are particularly relevant in rescue workers that it is morally and professionally acceptable to decline an overly hazardous rescue. Cue‐based training as well as equipment provision is also vital in assessing risk.

Hostage negotiations: Types, processes, outcomes

In recent years hostage taking has become a frequently used tactic of political terrorists. Besides generating terror, hostage taking can also achieve the tangible outcome of ransom as well as the intangible, critically important political outcome of forcing governments to negotiate with-and possibly yield to-groups they would be otherwise reluctant to recognize. The potential impact of a hostagetaking incident intensifies in direct proportion to the duration of the incident and the mass media coverage it receives. This coverage not only highlights the actions of the terrorists and the fate of their hostages, but also exposes the behavior of authorities to immediate public scrutiny. These unique features of hostage taking assure its repeated use by terrorists. Modern hostage incidents have varied considerably in both development and outcomes. Sometimes authorities have hastily capitulated (e.g. , the 1976 Croatian skyjacking) while at other times target governments have steadfastly refused to concede (e.g., the 1978 Moro case in Italy and Schleier's in West Germany, 1977) or have mounted complex and hazardous rescue operations (e.g., the 1976 Entebbe raid, the 1977 Mogadishu raid and the aborted U.S. effort to free American hostages in Iran in 1980). Clearly, the circumstances and personalities involved in each hostage incident differ and seem to defy generalization. Some generalizations are pOSSible, nevertheless. In my opinion, the probability that a hostage incident can be peacefully resolved via bargaining or, by contrast, become a potentially violent test of brinkmanship generally depends on two factors: 1. The perpetrators' immediate objectives; and 2. The established policy of the target government toward hostage tactics. Both of these factors have a direct effect on bargaining and brinkmanShip. It follows that an analysis of these factors and linkages between them can yield some useful tactical principles for the settlement of hostage incidents; these factors are discussed in the first section of the article. Hostage incidents differ in their likelihood of either being resolved via bargaining or, alternatively, degenerating into contests of brinkmanship. Bargaining and brinkmanship in hostage situations are discussed in the second section of the paper, while the third section offers some tactical advice on the management of hostage incidents. This advice bears primarily on those incidents where a negotiated solution is difficult or impossible, that is, incidents that are dominated by the dynamicS of brinkmanship.