Talk:situational awareness

RFV discussion: September 2011–March 2012

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situational awareness

Citations needed or just sum-of-parts? · 21:01, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Looks very SoP to me. Definition is "The maintenance of alertness regarding one's surroundings while multitasking in an emergency medicine environment". If you drop the "while...in..." clause then it's thoroughly obvious. So I suppose we need citations to show that this only applies to medical multitasking situations! Equinox ◑ 21:04, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

...which it clearly doesn't.​—msh210℠ (talk) 21:13, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I never said it only applies to emergency medicine. I am however only interested in adding EMS terminology so I added the EMS definition of SA here. The term is also used to knowledge in the military, criminal justice, self-defense, martial arts, and in survival situations. Basically in any situation where you should expect your circumstances could change into a situation that may be alarming or deteriorating you use SA to keep on track of what is going on and hopefully you know what to do when X happens and when X does happen your fight-or-flight gives in quickly. In any case the emergency medicine definition is correct and supported by "Emergency Care and Transportation of the Sick and Injured, 10th Edition" Make sense? Not opposed to anyone adding in additional definitions but it is not my goal here.Gtroy 00:53, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

The point is, if it's not specific to emergency medicine, and the true definition is just "The maintenance of alertness regarding one's surroundings", then it just means "situational" + "awareness", and isn't an idiom, so doesn't warrant a dictionary entry. (But I'm obviously open to an explanation of why it does warrant a dictionary entry, if you believe that it does.) —Ruakh_TALK 01:07, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know the proper term to explain it and am not good with the names of the parts of speech, call me crazy but I know wikis help you along and I know that the OED was literally written by crazy people in sanitariums so I believe there is a place for me here. I am 100% certain situational awareness is a word it is not just situation + awareness, I do know that "Be aware of your surroundings" should not be here because it is more of a sentence. I don't think it is an idiom but it is a word. Maybe if I use it in a sentence. "Keep situational awareness in mind on all convoys at all times." "As EMS we know that maintaining situational awareness helps prevent injury and maintain scene safety." Does that make sense now? And it is specific to emergency medicine (EM) it is a topic of study in EM and a term used very often. If we followed old school grammar rules it would be hyphenated or compounded. It is used in military and rescue basically.Gtroy 02:03, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Gtroy, above you just said "I never said it only applies to emergency medicine", and now you're saying "it is specific to emergency medicine". So, which is it? Oh and "As EMS we know that maintaining situational awareness helps prevent injury and maintain scene safety." sure, but that's not a reason to include it in a dictionary. When I'm stripping wallpaper I know that ladder safety is important, so what? Just look up ladder and safety. Move to RFD. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:09, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

This might be stirring already-muddy waters, but my general sense is that I've heard "situational awareness" used as a sort of set phrase in specific contexts. Others deemed it idiomatic enough to include in the online Eijirō JA-EN dictionary, for instance (link). -- Another 2p for the pot, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 17:17, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

It's not a matter of which one is it. It is a word the covers several areas, but furthermore it has a more specific EMS definition. ladder safety as far as I know is not used as a word but a phrase or part of a sentence. situational and awareness looked up separately do not meet the needs of someone trying to learn what situational awareness is. It is a noun. You either have SA or you don't. It is a word you would find in a glossary in any military manual or SOP and the same goes for fire science, criminal justice and ems. Maybe most people don't use it but it is part of the sociolect for EMS as you very well know.Gtroy 20:08, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

You're not providing any evidence to back this up, you're just asserting it. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:46, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Wrong, I am citing Emergency Care and Transport of the Sick and Injured (10th edition) by the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, you can do your own research. You may also check the UCMJ and wikipedia or do a simple google search. This proves I am not making anything up. This term is specialized paramilitary and emergency medicine terminology, and you cannot disprove that.Gtroy 23:41, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

But in each occupation or field of endeavor or "context" it is, from a dictionary PoV, just different aspects of a situation that one is supposed to be aware of. That a specialized occupational/field-of-endeavor glossary defines the term in a glossary does not indicate to me that the term is necessarily dictionary-worthy.

On the other hand, you might want to compare your term with some of the multi-word entries in Category:en:Linguistics (eg, conceptual metaphor) to see whether the arguments against inclusion of situational awareness are applied consistently in all occupations/fields of endeavor. DCDuring TALK 00:10, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

This word is a noun it is a specific idea, situation+awareness does not work. You can not be situation and aware, but you can have situational awareness.Gtroy 18:32, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

What?! By that token we should have an entry for slightly sleepy, because you can't be "slightly" on its own. Equinox ◑ 18:35, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Gtroy seems to be so sure that situation awareness doesn't work, he/she's created an entry for it. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:00, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

So does the army teach people about being "slightly sleepy"? What about EMS?Gtroy 20:38, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I propose that we have the general definition here (or just delete both entries as SoP), then add specialist usages, where much more is read into a phrase than it actually means, to an appropriate appendix. We shouldn't confuse the meaning of a word or expression with the ideas that are associated with that word or expression in specific circumstances. Dbfirs 16:25, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

That's fine, but I think the one and only definition should end with especially in military and emergency situations.Gtroy 05:34, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree that is it widely used in those disciplines, but far from exclusively. As far as I can see, the term just means awareness of the situation, and various disciplines interpret the meaning in different ways. This doesn't imply that the words actually mean something different in each discipline, just that the things one should be aware of differ according to the situation. Dbfirs 10:12, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Deleted. - -sche (discuss) 07:11, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Lemmings?

“situational awareness”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. DCDuring (talk) 21:49, 19 August 2020 (UTC)