When was the last time you had to make a decision? I’m guessing probably at most only a few minutes ago. That decision could have been huge (Yes, I’m going to buy this house) or tiny (Yes, I’ll have a cup of tea). We make thousands of decisions every day Read more
Most of us have been accused of “not paying enough attention” at some point in our lives. As you’ll see from this blog however, it’s difficult to pay more attention. Instead, we need to know what to pay attention to and what to do with that information. Situation awareness Read more
A Just Culture is probably one of the most misunderstood concepts in Human Factors. In this blog I’m going to explain what we mean by it and why it’s so important to have to allow learning to happen. What do we mean by culture? According to the dictionary, culture Read more
My friend was cooking a meal for her family and before putting the meat in the tray, she cut the ends off. When her young daughter saw her do this, she asked why. My friend replied “it’s what I’ve always done; it’s how my mother did it”. The daughter was Read more
Last month I wrote about my friend’s experience on a liveaboard in an area with strong currents. One of my comments was that safety is boring because it stops us doing fun things. I wanted to explain a little more about why actually, it’s the opposite…safety lets us do MORE. Read more
I was talking to a friend the other day about a liveaboard she’d been on in a high current area. She’s an instructor and a tech diver, and I would consider her to be a fairly strong and capable diver. She was telling me about the currents they’d encountered Read more
I’ve written a number of blogs on here but one of them got considerably more discussion than the others. It was this one: My biggest mistake. It was fascinating to read the comments from people both publicly in the Human Factors in Diving Facebook group and ones that were privately Read more
We learn best from mistakes and it is always better if we don’t repeat mistakes. So for learning purposes, I’d like to share a mistake I made. I have two ways of telling this story; I can either tell you what I did (and the outcomes) or I can give Read more
There is a principle of education that is often left out of dive instructor education which I think is really important for instructors to consider; Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This is a quick intro to the model, along with why it’s so important for instructors to be aware of Read more
The best is the enemy of the good A short while ago I was asked to write a blog, as a newly qualified Human Factors in Diving Instructor. We talked about a subject and all seemed ok. But try as I might, I just could not explain the topic as Read more