Competence

Ben, our Irish wilderness emergency medical instructor (god, that’s a mouthful), was enthusiastically demonstrating how to gage someone’s severity of injury to a rather confused guinea pig Stuart acting as the “suspected fracture” patient, by using the “I need your help” - method:  

After his ABC’s (Airways, Breathing and Circulation, etc.) and a swift splinting of the arm, he swoops under him, propping him up on his shoulder and tells him: “Now, Stuart, I know ‘ya may have a broken arm, but I need y’er help walking to ‘yer man over there by the 4x4 to get y’a back to your ma’”.  (Sorry Ben, that’s what the Irish sound like in my head.) 

So, off they stumble towards the imaginary rescue vehicle.

Ben’s entire patient assessment, including getting him into the safety of a vehicle, took him all but 7 minutes, whereas us trainees all faffed about for easily double the time. You see, by making Stuart walk, he could check for secondary injuries, possible circulation issues, neurological issues all in one go. Most importantly, he gave the patient a sense of agency and something to focus on, other than his excruciating pain. 

Counterintuitively, it is often very useful to tell an injured person (only if they are conscious - dhu...) that you, their rescuer, needs their help. 

In less extreme situations, the same principle applies:

If you want to help someone, don’t try and prop up their ego. Give them the opportunity to operate within their applicable competence. Ask them for advice, a helping hand, an opinion. Coddling someone, or feeling sorry for them ultimately helps no one. Empathy-yes, pity - no. If you’re helping someone remember that they do need help, but they are not helpless. 

Vice versa, a good way to make yourself feel better, is to do something that makes you feel useful, either helping someone else, or yourself. 

Now, some people, in some situations can not hold any level of self responsibility (very young children; impaired people) and some do not want it (very young children; social martyrs) but the mere act of assuming someone has self agency and at least basic life competency, is the foundation of being treated with dignity. 

When confidence meets competence

I was on duty to guard the roped off area behind which my colleagues were running avalanche explosions. Sometimes this feels like the most redundant place in the world to be, because snow mitigation works are done in the wee hours of the morning, well before any tourists are on the slopes. You are more likely to be run over by a stray mountain goat merrily fart-hopping along its morning route (yes, they fart a lot. Must be all that fibre) than a skier. But there’s always a slight chance of a lone ski tourer trudging towards early morning peak  glory, which is who we stand on guard for. 

We had already done 2 blasts, when my colleague F. was prepping the third, when sure enough, there he was.  

Now, for a bit of context: there are generally three types of ski tourers: the naturalist connoisseur who likes the solitude of the mountains, the athlete who’s a semi professional on some local “Berglauf” league, and the third, and most dangerous: 

The “I-need-to-escape-the-daily-power-point-hell-I’ve-maneuvered-myself-into” manager type. They usually do triathlons in summer, drive an SUV that’s all tires and no trunk space, and did one avalanche course, 6 years ago, making them with the most dangerous kind of expert of them all: the armchair expert. 

Now, this particular specimen heading towards me and my security rope, was definitely the third type. Head down, sweating profusely and decked out in gear looking like he either was a pro, or training to become one. He did not appreciate me stopping him. When he didn't believe me that I wasn’t just roping off the way to the peak at seven in the morning as a personal hobby of mine and that he would be walking straight into the blast zone, I pointed towards the ‘Warning! Explosives!’ sign with the big scary death’s head insignia, which also failed to impress him. After his mini tirade assuring me that he knew what he was doing, because he had gone up here a thousand times, he lifted his chin, took a determined breath, pushed past me, ducked under the rope and continued on his merry way. 

I took a photo of him so we knew who the rescue dogs may be looking for and radioed F., told him to hold the shot. 

F. said no-can-do, the fuse was already lit (it takes two minutes for the fuse to burn down to and detonate the load.) 

At this point all I can do is huck and pray. Literally. 

The blast went off, moving barely any snow because the snow pack was stable and I could see our friend in the distance had cleared the section, barely even flinching at the detonation. Now this particular fella didn’t seem to have any issues with confidence and assumed he was bullet proof (well in this case, 2.5 kilos of explosives proof) to personal disaster. It made me wonder...

Confidence comes from the latin words ‘com’ - *with* and ‘fidere’ - *to trust*, so it literally means ‘with trust’. So if you enter a situation “with trust”, you better make sure you control most of its variables. However, in the real world control is mostly a temporary solution and thus trust is extremely fragile. Anyone who’s ever dated a snowboard instructor knows this. 

Competence however...competence is the solid base made up by failure, knowledge and experience we can always fall back on, no matter our current emotional state. If Speedy McSpeederson had had competence, he would have stopped and waited to see if the snowpack moves, maybe even an extra five minutes or so after the initial detonation. Furious as he may be, he would have known that the mountain won’t match your imaginary timeline, no matter how hard you will it to. 

Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence.

That’s a fancy way of saying: “They didn’t mean bad, they just stupid.” Now, let’s give Mr. Manager the benefit of the doubt and assume that he wasn’t proactively suicidal, but attempting to outrun his problems. We have all been there. What could Inspector Gadget have done to hone his competence instead of attempting to bolster his most likely short lived confidence? 

He could have simply stopped and talked to me. We would have had a chat about what actually happens to the snowpack when you drop explosives on it, and why even crossing in a perceived safe distance isn’t necessarily safe. He was so sure of himself that instead of taking this opportunity to gain some competence, he saw me as an obstacle, not as an opportunity. As a badly fitted uniformed, under-caffeinated (yes), overpaid (absolutely not) ski bum who stood in the way of his early morning peak glory. 

Conversely, I was forced to acknowledge his agency when he refused to let me stop him, even for his own safety. When he ignored me and blasted past (pun intended), it was an awful feeling in the no-failures-allowed world of snow mitigation.

We both lost that morning.

He lost an opportunity to gain competence and ego-check his confidence, and I lost faith in my ability to make people see me.

But that story is for another time.