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Accident/Injury Investigation Training also know as SERT
Serious Event Review Team (SERT) Training
Accident Investigation (SERT) Program
Overview
The FDSOA SERT training is a one-day program designed to help fire departments understand and manage NFPA 1550 standards that apply to serious event data collection, analysis, and interpretation of findings, for any fire department that experiences an adverse event (accident, injury, close call). Emphasis is on equipping fire department investigation and review facilitators on managing the discovery process post event, followed by peer team analysis of the context surrounding the event that influenced behaviors, and construction of corrective actions that might prevent similar events and protect fire department members from catastrophic outcomes in the future.
This class will consider the following principals:
- People will make mistakes.
- Blame, punishment, and loss of credibility fixes nothing.
- Work environment (context) drives behavior.
- Learning and improvement is vital.
- How leadership responds to failure matters.
Fire department safety leaders looking for a process that takes a fresh, deeper look at the how and why an event happened, and how to effectively move forward are encouraged to take this class.
Goals for the SERT process include:
- Seeking firefighter/staff expertise to understand work context.
- Understanding when operations were at capacity thresholds.
- Holding honest conversations about work design versus how work gets done.
- Using peer teams as problem identifiers and solution builders.
- Finding ways to enhance fire department reliability and resilience.
- Establishing an investigative review process that exceeds NFPA 1550.
The book “Hold the Blame, Hunt to Learn” (2023) by Mark Keough is required reading for this class.