Research

The researchers serving the people who serve for our communities

Tactical Research Unit Rapid Fire Mini Congress

Dr Scott Gayton’s Research Week address began in a pitch-black theatre within the Faculty of Health Sciences & Medicine.

While the loss of lights perplexed some of the general audience, Dr Gayton, a registered psychologist with more than 25 years of military experience, explained that some people felt more comfortable sitting in the darkness than others.

The flick of the lights flicked on a methodical train of thought for a few trained members of the crowd.

“For some people, when they walked in, they would have seen that the exit signs are to the right, that there are five seats to their left, and that if they turned left and walked straight… they would find a chair in front of the door of the exit sign and they would know they have to get to the other side,” Dr Gayton said.

He explained that those are the same people who, upon boarding any aircraft, count the exit signs and the seats, listen attentively to the safety briefing, and ponder rehearsing an emergency evacuation.

“These are the people who we talk about and give thanks for, who put service above self,” he said.

Dr Gayton is talking about tactical personnel, and there’s a whole team at Bond University working tirelessly to optimise the performance of these people who are on standby to protect the community anywhere they go.

From military personnel to law enforcement, firefighters, and first responders — since 2015, Bond’s Tactical Research Unit (TRU) has prioritised the performance and safety of our protectors.

Dr Gayton, from Mission Critical Team Performance Consultancy, supports the TRU as an assistant researcher.

A man in a white shirts stands in the centre of a lecture theatre. — Dr Scott Gayton delivers a keynote speech on selecting high-reliability teams.

His keynote address, Creating Mission Critical Teams, during Research Week 2023 shared expert insight concerning selecting personnel for, and characteristics of, mission-critical teams (MCTs) and high-reliability teams (HRTs).

Dr Gayton touched on environmental factors, theory on the origins of these teams, selection, training, mental health and fatigue.

He said there was work happening across a range of areas as organisations need to take a holistic approach when it comes to the selection, training, and support of personnel.

“You can’t just look at fitness as a selection tool for MCTs… you can’t just look at a psychological personality test,” he said.

“And training — you can’t just train by going to the kill house every time and think that’s going to cover the variety of missions and profiles that will emerge.”

Dr Gayton said he was looking forward to seeing more experimental data in the space.

“It needs to be operationalised, that’s the future,” he said.

Tactical Research Unit Vision

Excellence in research that will lead to improvements in the health, well-being and occupational performance of tactical personnel

The TRU leaders feel the heat

A rapid-fire challenge heated up the TRU's Research Week event, after Dr Gayton's speech, with the unit's coordinators and director having three minutes to deliver presentations on projects before being buzzed out.

The TRU Project Coordinator Dr Elisa Canetti, who hosted the Research Week event, began by talking about the research they've carried out around the occupational tasks of traffic and highway patrol officers.

One of the projects which the TRU Research Coordinator Dr Ben Schram talked about was the fitness of specialist police teams.

And the TRU Director Dr Rob Orr touched on research looking at the differences in injury profiles of general duties police and those working in traffic and highway patrol.

These are just three of dozens of research projects the TRU have worked on.

The scope of the TRU research and services spans but is not limited to the following:

Occupational task analysis
Fitness standard validation
Physiological and musculoskeletal profiling and fitness screening
Physical capability and task performance evaluation
Injury epidemiology
Injury risk identification, minimisation and mitigation
Equipment to human integration and impact assessments
Thermal and hydration research
Physical conditioning reviews
Physical conditioning program development
Tactical performance, health, fitness and well-being

2023 to date

Outputs: 18 Peer review journal publications
Sharing insights: 26 Conference presentations
Reports: 2 Technical reports
Students: 18 Higher Degree Research (HDR) students

A symptom that must be managed

Being on standby to respond to an incident at any time of day has its downfalls, and a big one is fatigue.

Due to the nature of operations that high-reliability teams (HRTs) engage in, they often operate by shift work.

Fatigue in shift work can't be eliminated, so it must be managed well, and PhD candidate Graham Marvin delivered some insights during the Research Week event on how it can be done in HRTs.

Mr Marvin said the types of fatigue ranged from cognitive to physical, emotional, visual, vocal, and burnout due to leadership or culture.

"It leads to an inability to think, move, feel, see and speak," Mr Marvin said.

"Which is basically how we interact in our everyday lives with everybody we talk with and see on a daily basis

"So fatigue really affects everything we do in the occupation and outside of the occupation."

Depending on the type of fatigue, impacts on shift work can include decreased reaction times, reduced memory, falling asleep at the wheel, reduced power output and balance, insomnia and mental health concerns, among others.

"Fatigue disrupts focus and attention, plain and simple," Mr Marvin said.

He said while it can't be eliminated, there were some mitigation strategies for fatigue, including: