National Fire Fighter Near-Miss Reporting System

Based on the first year of data, the various working groups of the National Fire Fighter Near-Miss Reporting System have offered the following recommendations for error-management and to improve firefighter performance and safety.

• Require a 360-degree evaluation of all structures prior to interior operations

• Require all officers to perform a risk/benefit analysis. When the risk exceeds the benefit, safety trumps exposure to harm

• Adopt an error management philosophy at the department level and distinguish between good faith errors and disregard for policy

• Explore and adopt crew resource management to improve leader performance, crew safety, and incident management

• Aggressive mentalities need to transition into purposeful action mentalities

• Blind "duty to act" mindsets create harmful institutional climates and put firefighters in unnecessary danger

• Fire departments must share knowledge gained from near-misses that were prevented by following procedure, as well as those that occur due to error

• The near-miss reporting system should add questions about SOGs/SOPs, supervisor training, and organizational elements to aid in the review process