Citation

Hunsucker J, Davison S. Int. J. Aquatic Res. Educ. 2013; 7(3): 227-237.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Bowling Green State University)

DOI

10.25035/ijare.07.03.06

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper aims to understand the challenges associated with establishing a time goal for scanning a lifeguard's area of responsibility and identifying critical incidents requiring a response. It analyzed the results of 289 lifeguard inspections from aquatic facilities with management emphasis on scanning. Those scanning summaries from the inspections covered 15,737 lifeguard observations where lifeguards were trained using two different scanning goals: (1) scan their area of responsibility within 15 s with an emphasis on using visual recognition signals to identify an incident and (2) recognize victims within 10 s in their area of responsibility. Analysis showed an average scan time of 22.65 s with 41.86% of responses within 0-15 s and 37.03% of responses within 16-30 s. The 10 s goal averaged 25.96 s while the 15 s goal had an average 21.96 s scan time. The weak implication was that if guards were trained using the goal of a scan taking 15 s or less, there was a reasonable chance that a large percentage of their scans will be completed within 30 s or less. Additional research is needed to discover whether there are other goals or methods that might produce even more effective scanning and times. © 2013 Human Kinetics, Inc.

Language: en

Keywords

Lifeguarding; Water safety; Scanning