Failure Is Necessary:

In a busy emergency infrastructure, we’re commonly overwhelmed. Professionals acclimate to such rigors as sleep deprivation, understaffing, overworking, and operating in dangerous environments. Those outside of Emergency Response cannot imagine how effective and reliable patient care occurs under such pressures, yet the pros possess uncanny skill and affection for the adventure. The secret: train to make decisions rapidly and course corrections under extreme duress. It’s not learned overnight or over a year. It’s a never-ending practice of presiding over one’s imperfections.

Early on, my students learn the tenets of trial and error. When you fall, I encourage you to get up. When mistakes are made, quickly fix them, and don’t repeat them. One rule is paramount: Don’t take failure as defeat.

The Burden of the Trophy Generation

The children plead: “It’s not our fault, our parents didn’t allow us to fail.” Parents say: “We meant well.” For whatever reason, there is a hardwired taboo in modern culture to be incorrect. We make concessions and allowances, often passing the buck. It’s not ideal or admirable, but it often goes unchallenged. Except, when life is on the line, there needs to be accountability and a plan for improvement, with the leniency and ability to allow someone to improve without irreparable penalty. It’s the only way the younger generations will learn the difference between being incorrect, off-track, correctable, or criminal. This must be taught early on in school and reinforced throughout their education.

In my courses, students need to dare to improvise, make dire decisions quickly, and trust that there’s freedom to be incorrect. The first mistakes are always the hardest for students, and they should be handled accordingly. No one expects students to know lifesaving care right off the bat. Even so, the delicacy makes each student a case-by-case situation that deserves unique critique.

Maybe that’s the necessary pain that has to be felt in order to dedicate more. Maybe that is the test to see who truly wants to be here. Losing doesn’t get any easier, especially in Emergency Response. SO maybe we all die just a little here, and then grow from it…grow out of it. Most of them do, and it’s beautiful to watch.

I’ve built safety nets for mistakes up front. I joke with them about it, and repeat the sentiment over the semester. "‘Start killing left and right, slaughter this one, break this one’s neck, overlook that patient’s heart attack. Who cares? There’s no harm in forgetting the arm in a practice scenario. Let’s learn how to become comfortable in discomfort, sharpen our skills now, and leave the harmful practices in the classroom.’

Try, Try Again

At its base, there’s you and the mountain. Above is the peak; below is everyone else. Shale, landslides, cliffs, and cougars lay ahead. Sometimes, it’s a team event, but on the proving- ground, the foothold is wide enough for only one person. I tell them to walk that path often; get used to the feeling. Inevitably, beginners are going to fall on their academic asses more than once. The point is to learn from the falls. Lessons are best learned when the best when hard-won. As the saying goes: “If at first you don’t succeed…try, try again.” Notice ‘try’ is emphasized twice?

I intend you to stumble in my classes. You learn to navigate the darkness by stubbing toes and concussing egos. If you don’t give up, improvement is inevitable. Learn the room layout by stepping, falling, standing up, and pushing forward another step. One day, in a fire, while in a house fire, crawling through the impenetrable black heat, you’ll instinctively navigate through a labyrinth of overturned furniture, crawl under the heaped roof timbers, find a crying toddler cowering on the other side, and rescue her. When suddenly, the grand design of the world shows you why all the failures of your past needed to occur so that you could save this child’s life, you can thank me then.

But seriously, making sensible gut decisions when failure is a possibility is an essential skill for this job.* You have to learn how to think rationally when stressed, which begins through trial and error.

Richard Kolomay & Robert Hoff Firefighter Rescue and Survival, Fire Engineering Books, 2003, Ch. 1, 3-5

Bully The Tough Guy

In our society, everyone loves “The Fool” because every professional—every hero—began as a fool. In my courses, there’s always one fool who can be cajoled early and often:…me. Since I put so much importance on learning to make mistakes, I should be the first one to break through the icy scrim of ego, cop to my shortcomings, and humbly course-correct when necessary. I’ve bumbled my way through most of life, and probably will keep on keeping on that way. I’ve learned to use it to my advantage. It demonstrates humility, critical thinking, and honesty.

If I’m wrong, I announce it to the class. If I don’t know the right answer, I look it up and report it to the class after break. I always respected teachers, officers, and supervisors who did that, and I believe that respectable educators should lead by example. How else will the student learn how to admit to mistakes if they don’t witness their teacher screw up, then own up, and finally shape up?

So, start with the presumably most bullet-proof individual in class, and let it ripple out. I watch the students who laugh and who share my sense of humor. With no goading, these students often share their own blundering mishaps with their cohort, adding riotous laughter to the fire. They get it; their confidence isn’t staked on mistakes. Organically, the learning environment becomes playful and forgiving and will allow the class to weather the semester’s occasional trying periods ahead.

The students who stick their necks out in discussion often volunteer for classroom skills practice and testing. When doing so, they not only demonstrate proper equipment and skill performance but also the proper mindset for instruction and critique. They show the class how to listen and revise techniques while being coached and assisted by instructors. They set the tone for the class, thus making them excellent candidates for Squad Leaders later in the semester and Lab Assistants after passing NREMT.

Ideally, the cohort cottons onto an impartial, curious willingness to experiment and improve through trial and error. This hopefully travels with students through schooling and careers, allowing them to quickly adapt to adverse working conditions, learning on the job, and staying disciplined while not completely self-combusting when they slip up. Rather, they have learned to quickly course correct. When others around them fall short, they extend a forgiving hand, and help that individual also correct his or her mistakes without overt punishment. Believe it, if they intend on working to save the sick, dying, and injured, conducting oneself in accordance with these tenets is not simply important; it’s essential.

Kintsugi: The Art of Failure

If you’re gonna be wrong, be wrong strong. When unsure during a classroom exercise, assess the variables, make the most competent, informed decision, and fully commit to it; mind, body, and gut. Leap with both feet. You won’t make it to the far side otherwise. Though this is practice for the real thing, the decision tree from which you leaped and all the feelings associated with that act organically manifested, and will inevitably manifest during a real emergency. During these scenarios, if you can place yourself in that scenario with a high degree of verisimilitude, your conscious mind considers it virtually indistinguishable self from a real-life emergency In other words, you’re there for real! I suggest you make these training sessions as real as possible. Put something at stake, wager on yourself; allow yourself to feel fear and hope. Transport yourself into the lion’s mouth for a gut-churning half-hour of problem-solving. This is your chance to commit to a terrifying adventure at no risk to yourself or the public. On the contrary, you will be serving yourself and society by perfecting your prowess under pressure, becoming slightly better for the inevitable day you face the lion out in the world, when the stakes are mortally high.

Pain & Strength

Lastly, in our culture, there is a taboo regarding pain, suffering, loss. and death. It’s a dangerous mistake. It has to be understood in small portions so that eventually, death and suffering are better understood and properly fitted within the significant aspects of our lives. I introduce pain, difficulty, awkwardness, sadness, and errors in class to introduce and encourage students to form healthy relationships with them. I want everyone to tackle their difficulties—grand and granular— unabashedly but compassionately. Once acknowledged, psychoanalytic disciplines and counseling can properly contextualize our traumatic memories so that they can be properly “sized” in accordance with their significance to the other aspects of our lives. If we know there’s something terrible hiding in our subconscious, but we’re too afraid to address and rationalize it, terror grows wings. Instead, if we initially learn to address, consider, prioritize, digest, and eventually leave trauma behind us, we’ve learned how to move on. From that point onward, we know how to properly process, prioritize, and part with trauma in perpetuity.

When you fail, flunk, lose, are left behind, aren’t picked, stand alone, are lost, damaged, intentionally injured, defamed, or defeated, it hurts. The necessary discipline to sit still in your issues, assess the conditions, acquire your bearings, and course correct is the pearl inside the shell of the trial and error course dynamic. Learning to interpret pain as the body’s unwillingness to repeat the mistake rather than a punishment or berating allows students to put pain to good use. A person who learns to impartially acknowledge mistakes, rapidly integrate the learned lessons, improve upon their success strategy, and continue on without repeating previous incorrect behavior has learned the most significant lesson in education, quite possibly in life. Distill the truth from the pain. Lesson becomes reality, the pain becomes allegorical.

In emergency response professions, failures exponentially multiply. Correctly, we must learn to manage negativity as soon as we begin our careers.

Imagine, during a fire, you grab a hose and decide to enter through the left apartment window. No one’s inside. Later, you learn that a kid died inside the right apartment window. You guessed wrong, and someone died. Over a career, how many of those instances do you imagine you have? How many could you manage before it created lasting trauma? A mental health epidemic exists in Public Service and Military careers that are devouring our heroes, and like cancer and cardiovascular disease, it is a catastrophe we can no longer ignore. Suicide must be addressed and managed, people need to learn that criticism and debate are a means of strengthening their own abilities and opinions. Conversations must be hashed out, people have to conduct open, honest, passionate discourse on seemingly trivial matters. The touchy subjects are conversational training wheels so that topics like mental health, addiction, suicide, and life-threatening illness can be communally discussed. If not, the winged monster no one speaks about drives us mad, suicidal, homicidal, or worse. No more fighting, no more silence. Let’s educate and evolve.

To prepare for the impending storms—be they nuclear, cultural, or biblical—rigorous debates must be encouraged, theories need to be tested and proven, and methods troubleshot. Likewise, job-related vagaries and mistakes must be openly addressed and compassionately dealt with. It’s not comfortable, but the issues that slip through the cracks wind up rotting society’s linkages, and people needlessly die due to dangerous practices.

Learning to manage failure means seeking help for so-called weakness and job-related guilt. Building a maintenance routine around physical and mental health and regularly assessing your strengths, weaknesses, failures, and accomplishments is one of the only intellectual ways to stay sane. Coupled with healthy living, meaningful work, and possibly mental medication. Reputable counseling avails the most of people’s failures are not their immediate fault, that other powers were in play, and the pillar of wisdom has a hole in it. In a morbid twist of events, punishment is the desired outcome, not the feared consequence. Does the aversion to facing the soul, warts, wine, and all stem from a pathological ignorance of strengths and shortcomings? Is this why many caregivers hide inside bottles, throwing them against the wall when caught peering in at their true selves?

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