Identification of physically demanding tasks performed during bushfire suppression by Australian rural firefighters

Self-Rated Physical Loads of Work Tasks Among Firefighters

“…This resulted in useful overall information but lacked specificity in terms of the tasks that were included. A recent study has identified physically demanding tasks and their frequencies among rural firefighters in Australia using semistructured group interviews, but these results might not be applicable to other rescue services [9]. No recent studies have investigated the physical demands applicable for general firefighting and rescue services nor have any studies compared ratings of physical demands between full-and part-time firefighters.…”

“…Payne, Lord, et al [9], the most physically demanding tasks were identified by combining two issues. The present study constitutes the first step in the development of physical performance tests for firefighters.…”

“…Some studies suggest that readiness should be maintained only for common work tasks that are at the same time physically demanding [16,22,23,24]. According to Phillips, Payne, Lord, et al, it is important to first identify the most physically demanding work tasks and then to investigate the frequency at which they are performed [9]. Otherwise, physically demanding tasks might mistakenly be omitted because they are performed less frequently and thus not classified as critical.…”

“…The physical training status [1,2], anthropometrics [2,3,4], body balance [5], flexibility [3], lag time (the time from an incoming call to departure of service vehicles) [6] and preparation of the emergency vehicles [7] affect the firefighter's work performance. Correlations between work performance and isolated physical capacities have been investigated for different types of firefighting activities, including navy shipboard firefighting [8], the pack hike test [9,10,11] and rescuing hospital patients [2]. Work task courses, which include several work tasks such as climbing stairs, carrying equipment, raising and extending a ladder, forcible entry, searching, ceiling breach and pulling, rescue dragging, and advanced hose pulling have also been investigated [3,4,12,13,14,15,16].…”

Validity and reliability of physical employment standards

“…SMEs are often employed to not only determine the critical tasks, but also to describe and confirm the MOBP for their execution, including the minimum acceptable pace/intensity of a task (Bilzon et al 2002;Reilly and Tipton 2005;Phillips et al 2012;Milligan 2013;Siddall et al 2014;Rogers et al 2014;Blacklock et al 2015;Taylor et al 2015a).…”