After gaining ethical approval, designing and piloting our cognitive tests, and preparing the telemetric pills to capture core body temperature, in July we embarked on our first testing day! We were privileged to be testing at the Fire Service Technical College in Morton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire (thank you all for your help and support on the day!). Four firefighters volunteered to take the pills and complete our cognitive tests before and after a live-fire training exercise in a multi-storey building.
This was the first time Catherine and Lucy had visited a fire training ground and it was a new experience to see the inside of a fire engine, watch the different situations that firefighters train for, and test the weight of the breathing apparatus set. Collecting data in the field is challenging and just being able to watch what happens on the training ground will help us to prepare for next time.
Our participants first took the battery of cognitive tests in a classroom when they took their pill. When they were completing the live-fire training exercise we set up in a small shelter on the training ground so they could take the tests on exiting the fire. The firefighters also took the battery 20-minutes and 40-minutes after the fire (Brian kept things running smoothly with regards to timings and had complete control of the walkie-talkie).
The purpose of asking participants to complete the cognitive battery four times is so that we have a baseline measure of their performance (pre-fire) and we can then compare performance after the fire to this baseline measure to identify any impairments. Taking an assessment of cognition at 0, 20, and 40 minutes post-fire will allow us to measure the time it takes for cognition to recover following the training exercise. This is a significant investment of time and effort from the firefighters who volunteer for the study, and we are very grateful for their participation.
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