Dr.Hab., Professor M.T. Lobzha¹
PhD, Associate Professor E.G. Tyshchenko^1
1St. Petersburg University of the State Fire Service of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia, St. Petersburg

Keywords: professional training, rescue operations, physical fitness, interpersonal relationship, stress situation, social accommodation, functional qualities, method

Background. The professional training system applied by the rescue crews of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations (MES) is designed to successfully attain a variety of specific specialist training goals and build up the general and professional competences as required by the relevant profiles and specialties i.e. develop special and systemic knowledge, skills and abilities critical for success of search and rescue services [3, 4, 5 et al].

Every discipline in the professional rescue crew training system is geared to contribute to the individual professional fitness level and ensure due teamwork being developed by every search and rescue crew within the specific algorithm of the emergency rescue operation. However, every emergency situation is different and not always allows the standard action algorithm to be applied all the more that the situation-specific combinations of negative emotional and social factors may be detrimental even for the well-developed professional specialists’ teamwork, with the individual social interaction and harmony maintaining skills being critical for success of the latter.

It should be noted, however, that the relevant socialising phenomena are still understudied at this juncture, and the social accommodation as a term and phenomenon is still in need of a commonly acceptable definition. Thus, as provided by L.Y. Sirotkin, social accommodation may be interpreted as the individual mental status pivotal for a creative development process [6]; whilst Y.M. Efimova defines it as the integrated individual trait that may be referred to as a stable system of personal views [7]. We would define social accommodation as individual resistance to a variety of negative social and mental effects.

The interpersonal relationship of trainees in the professional rescue crew theoretical and practical training process is particularly expressed in the physical training domain, albeit the existing special physical fitness and progress rating subsystem (as one of its critical parts) is limited by the individual physical progress rating tests only. This test procedure is presently unable to rate the interpersonal relationship and, hence, not always positive and motivating enough for the specialists in the context of their common goals; it may be stated that it fails to provide support for the social accommodation efforts. It should be noted, however, that a good teamwork driven by a reasonable interpersonal competition secures success both in the physical fitness tests and in the actual service missions under the highest mental and physical stresses typical for emergency situations.

We applied special competitive teamwork building practices to design the social accommodation model within the physical training course, the practices being performed by the crews in a competitive format with the success being rated by points. The competitive teamwork building practices included the following in the Mobility and Track and Field Sport discipline: 100m relay races; and the 3/5km quick marches in crews; in the Applied Gymnastics discipline: pull-ups; prone push-ups; and combined strength practices in crews; in the Applied Swimming discipline: 100/200m swimming in crews; and 5/10km ski races in crews. The above group practices were applied in the crew progress rating tests and in the crew competitions. Such design of the training model made it possible to effectively model the prestart condition normally experienced by the rescue crews prior to the search and rescue missions, plus the interpersonal communication under the highest physical stresses usual for emergency rescue missions.  

Objective of the study was to develop an efficient training model to build up the social accommodation and professional progress motivations in professional rescue crews.

Methods and structure of the study. To assess benefits of the proposed new model for the social accommodation of the rescue crews, we tested the model at the North-Western Regional Rescue Centre on the following two groups. The Study Group (SG) applied the competitive teamwork building practices with the progress rating tests; and the Reference Group (RG) was trained as required by the valid education program.

Subject to the educational process experiment were the standard rescue crews (n = 60) of 4 units who were had been trained for two years under the professional education and training course. The team practices were designed with a special emphasis on the interpersonal communication modelling in the high-stress situations so as to build up the service-specific social accommodation in the crew members.

We applied the relevant socio-metric questionnaire form [9] to rate the social accommodation progress of the subjects. Subject to the questionnaire survey were both the rescue crews and the commanding staff of the rescue units. The study data are given in Table 1 hereunder.

Table 1. Variations of the social accommodation rates in the subjects for the study period (prior to and after the experiment), in points on a 9-point scale

Study results and discussion. The Study Group showed a higher progress than the Reference Group as verified by every test rate, with the six test rates out of nine found significantly different (P<0.05), with the particular high differences in social activity, insistence and determination and personal status rates (P<0.01).

We believe that it was due to the differences in the mental and education process settings and the institutional and practical conditions of physical training courses on the whole and physical progress tests in particular that secured the significantly high progress in the social accommodation and mentality building domains in the Study Group. It is also highly probable that the group tests that encouraged the best individual and team progress facilitated the teamwork and interactive communication being effectively built. Moreover, the educational conditions established in the experiment largely contributed to the specific volitional control skills development process for the crew members being able to act under a variety of negative stress factors and resist to high and extreme mental and physical stresses, with due personal stress tolerance and favourable social and mental comfort being established in the rescue crew teamwork.

Conclusion

• The new social accommodation model makes a special emphasis on the special competitive teamwork building practices geared to facilitate interpersonal communication.
•  Quality of the service-specific teamwork in a rescue crew is determined by communication and interaction in professional operations driven to attain the common goals.
• The due social accommodation is built up based on direct interpersonal contacts of the crew members in the context of the joint emotional harmonising efforts. The competitive teamwork building practices designed to attain the highest goal were found beneficial for the potential negative responses to be duly mitigated and controlled and for the due social comfort to be cultivated in the teamwork via joint emotional harmonising efforts.

References

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Corresponding author: murena_59@mail.ru

Abstract

The study gives an overview of the special competitive teamwork building practices designed to facilitate social accommodation within the rescue crews of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia (MES) and included in their physical training course. Benefits of the special teamwork building practices were tested by an educational process experiment. Subject to the educational process experiment were the standard rescue crews (n = 60) of 4 units who were trained for two years under the professional education and training course. Objective of the study was to rate the social accommodation benefits of the special competitive team practices. The team practices were designed with a special emphasis on the interpersonal communication modelling in the high-stress situations so as to build up the service-specific social accommodation in the crew members. The proposed special competitive training method was found beneficial for social accommodation and due teamwork under stresses and, hence, effectively contributing to the professional fitness and competency building of the MES rescue crews. The social accommodation process was found mostly driven by direct friendly contacts of the crew members based on the growing emotional harmony. The competitive teamwork building model with the group practices focused on the best possible performance was found to effectively suppress potential negative emotions and build up social comfort and emotional harmony in the teamwork process under the service-specific stresses.