The impact of hardiness on the psychological safety of fire fighters and rescuers
Introduction. The professional activity of a firefighter is inseparable from psychological states associated with risks and challenges. Performing the tasks of extinguishing fires, eliminating emergency situations and man-made disasters, firefighters act in a team. Their hardiness, the ability to use adaptive strategies in difficult situations, the skill of constructive interpersonal interaction depends on their psychological safety. The aim of the study is to examine firefighters' resilience and its contribution to psychological safety. Materials and methods. The following methods were used: The Hardiness Survey (S. Muddy), The Security Questionnaire (Ch. Kong and L. Ahn), The Portrait Values Questionnaire (Sh. Schwartz). The study on the basis of IPSA GPSA of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia involved firefighters studying in the master's programme in the direction of "Fire Safety". Methods of mathematical data processing (descriptive statistics, Spearman rank correlation, regression analysis) were implemented in IBM SPSS Statistics 26 package. Results. The mean scores of resilience, personal psychological safety of firefighters were above the normative values. Significant correlations were found between psychological safety and resilience of firefighters, and involvement as a component of resilience is a predictor of psychological safety with the dominance of values of caring for people and nature. Conclusion. Firefighters' willingness to take risks, sense of confidence and control, and engagement enable adaptive, resilient coping mechanisms. Firefighters' higher sense of psychological safety reflects their ability to better cope with stress, make informed decisions, work effectively as a team, and maintain their psychological well-being in high-risk and high-responsibility environments. Job involvement and commitment to the values of the profession enhance their sense of psychological safety in a teamwork environment and confidence in control. It is important for leaders of fire and rescue organisations to understand the psychological benefits based on resilience and firefighters' sense of psychological safety and to employ practices to develop them.
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