The role of education and training in managing stress in the workplace

It is the author's thesis that training and education will provide greater personal confidence in staff to cope with potentially stressful conditions and to be better able to make the right decisions. Aircraft pilots are trained on simulators where a variety of potentially dangerous situations can be simulated, and the pilots trained how best to deal with them. Such training can be regularly repeated to refresh pilots' knowledge and reactions. Such training can provide pilots with confidence to deal with emergency conditions, and this reduces the stress and improves the likelihood that they will reach the right decisions. Training on simulators is applicable to many situations such as in the operation of chemical process plant and nuclear reactor plant. The author briefly discusses how such training may have reduced stress in major public disasters with particular reference to the King's Cross Underground fire.