Organization of teams
When I was in high school, I used to spend my summers working at the local park district as a
lifeguard and swim instructor. There was sort of a dual managerial system in place where one boss
dealt more with the lifeguards and the other was in charge of running the aquatics programs such as
swim lessons. Under them were the pool and scheduling managers that oversaw and were basically
in charge of each of the three pools since the two bosses had office work that required their attention.
The bottom rung of the ladder were the lifeguards and swim instructors that made up the majority of
the employees in the aquatics department with the only thing differentiating them was experience. At
two of the pools, things ran mediocrely. Some of the guards were inexperienced, but some of them were just lazy and inattentive. While this is obviously not OK, they could get away with it as all of the lifeguards were essentially watching the same pool and others would pick up their slack. The third pool was a wave pool and only elite guards were allowed to work there and this was the team that I was a part of. The wave pool had the most rescues occur and as a result, it was essential that everyone was “rescue ready” and able to function as a member of a team. If a medical emergency occurred, It was vital that everyone worked efficiently as every second wasted could mean the difference between life or death. At the pool there was a cashier, raft attendant, and a concession worker who were assigned to keep people away from the victim. There was the pool manager, whose job is mainly to call 911 if needed and make sure that everyone is doing their part. The managers are also trained lifeguards that can assist if needed. Finally, there are six guards, four in the chair and two in the office. If someone jumped in the pool for a rescue, one of the guards in the office had to take his place and the others had to assess the situation. If the waves are on, they had to be stopped. If the victim was passive the pool had to be cleared, another guard had to jump in to assist with the rescue, one guard would have to get a backboard (a board that assist with removing the victim from the water) and help remove the victim from the water, and someone would need to wait for the paramedics to show them the victim. Everyone played their part well because if they did not, it could mean the death of the victim. This horizontal hierarchy makes sense because it would be impossible for one person to direct six different people in such a hectic situation. Once the emergency was resolved, things returned to normal. We would reflect on saves each week at meetings where we would discuss what happened. If there was anything abnormal about the save, it would be brought up and used as a learning experience so that the entire process could be optimized. This is in sharp contrast to the other two pools where sometimes guards would even miss saves due to people not putting in maximum effort. I do remember one incident that had happened during my first year at the park district that particularly stands out. It had occurred at one of the other pools. A kid was drowning and went underwater in the middle of four guards and it took one of the patrons at the pool to go in and save the kid. While all four guards were fired, it does show the dangers of an ineffective team. This incident could be a consequence of everyone essentially having the same job and believing that someone would pick up their slack. Whether it is or it is not, it does show that teammates need to hold each other accountable so that they can depend on one another when it really matters.
For some reason, your first line of this post is in a different font and that line didn't wrap the text. If you are copying the text from some other place where you wrote the post, such as in MS Word, unfortunately that also copies in some other html code which interferes with how Blogger renders the text. If you paste into the HTML window rather than into the Compose window, that won't happen. However, the text will come in then with no line breaks. So you need to go back into the Compose window and put those in. I'm not sure whether you used the HTML window for the text after the first line, but what is produced above now is just one big blob of text. I would like to see it chunked into several paragraphs, with line spaces between each of those.
ReplyDeleteNow I will turn to the content of your post. Let me first ask this from the point of an outside observer. How many "save situations" are there during the summer? Your post made it sound like there is at least one each week. I want to contrast that with what I recall from my days as a camper at a sleep away camp and then as a counselor at a different sleep away camp. I don't ever recall witnessing such a "save situation." Then for a few years my kids went to a swim club in Champaign during the summer. I never heard of anything like what you reported. So your story looks a bit scary to me and my immediate reaction is that the wave pool should be shut down, if the circumstances really are as your describe them.
I'd be curious in your case how the lifeguards and swim instructors were selected, as well as to know what they were paid. Can you imagine some things that might have been done to make them more diligent in doing the work? For example, if there was a more experienced lifeguard also on duty at the same time who made a daily report on the performance of each of the other lifeguards, would that have changed things any. Alternatively, if college kids home for the summer were hired to do this work, would that have mattered?
I'm also wondering about things like swim tests for the kids and keeping poor swimmers in shallow water until they are more prepared to be in over their heads. Might being more stern with such rules have improved safety? You might also reflect on whether such a change would have impacted the demand for going to the park district pools.
I edited the post so that at least the post is now fully legible. I wrote it in google docs but did not realize that it would mess up the formatting if I copied it and pasted it in blogger. For the next post, I will write it in the compose part of blogspot.
ReplyDeleteWhile saves at the wave pool happened on a daily basis, situations like the ones I described might happen once or twice a summer across all the pools. Most saves are just distressed swimmers or people who fell off their rafts. These do not require a 911 call and the victims are free to go once their out of the water and give their information for a incident report. There is still some teamwork involved though because when someone jumps in, other guards have to cover that zone until another guard runs up to replace the one that jumped in.
Anyone can be a swim instructor given they know how to swim, but in order to be a lifeguard, one has to take a class and pass a test at the end to receive their certification. In addition guards have to be recertified every two years. There are all ready a lot of measures in place to make sure that guards are doing their jobs. Three times over the summer, Red Cross sends out someone to audit the three pools. In these audits, mock saves happen to make sure that is a life threatening situation does occur, the victim as a the chance possible to survive. Pool managers also do scan reports to make sure guards are scanning their zones near 10 seconds however these are not always done. College kids do work at the pools over the summer but they're mostly pool managers and scheduling managers or work at the wave pool where they are needed the most. Something that can be done is that new guards can have a period of time where they are supervised to make sure they so not miss anything. The problem with this though is that it would increase costs as more staff would have to be scheduled at a time.
Guards are allowed to keep kids in the shallow end if they deem them to be a weak swimmer, but the problem is that kids overestimate their abilities and underestimate the waves. There are adults who need saving too not just kids so while guards can try to prevent saves from occurring, it is not always possible. If we start being too limiting with rules, there might be a possibility that some adolescents might stop coming if they're not having fun but I think it could actually increase family attendance as parents might be more inclined to come if they feel thy're kids are safe