Abstract:

Job description of rescue workers is extremely difficult and requires accurate and fast decision making. Medical decision making is specific in that it is focused on restoration of health. It can be characterized by reactive approach that consists from reaction to observed symptoms, time pressure and has often personal consequences. Time pressure, tiredness caused by sleep deprivation or cognitive load, pressure to save costs or medical equipment has negative impact on their decision making. How to manage everyday paramedic practice is hardly to learn at school, but only in real life.
Indispensable part of learning process of rescue workers in Slovakia is competition. It is chance and challenge where they have possibility to verify and compare their skills with other international crews. There are several competitions attended by crews from Czech Republic, Slovakia, Japan, USA, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Nederland and other countries. Tasks for rescue workers are inspired by real events, sometimes curious and very hard to solve, where correctness of solution and behavior of rescue workers is assessed by several judges.
In present paper we discuss relations between experience and practice, perceived emotional demands and subjective certainty in extreme situations and several decision-making models of rescue workers using during competition and usefulness of their experiences from competition for their practice in real life.

Keywords:

Decision making, emotional stress.