Critical Incident Stress Management
What is a Critical Incident?
A critical incident is any event that causes an unusually intense stress reaction. The distress people experience after a critical incident can affect their ability to cope, and to adjust, which can then negatively impact on both their personal and professional lives.
Examples of common critical incidents that can occur in the workplace include:
- Witnessing a serious accident or crime
- Intimidating, threatening or abusive language or behaviour
- Physical violence or threats of physical violence
- Employee accident or injury in the workplace or while on duty
- Sudden illness or death of a colleague, client or customer
- Natural or manmade disasters that impact the ability to fully function in the workplace
Every profession can (and should) list their own worst-case scenarios that can be categorised as critical incidents.
What is Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) and how can it help?
CISM is a structured programme featuring a range of interventions designed to help individuals and groups process (and recover from) being involved in, or witnessing, a traumatic incident. It is a form of psychological first aid.
Originally used within the military and then by first/emergency responders it is now widely used as a structured and evidence-based approach to address trauma in various settings.
CISM is designed to help people deal with their trauma one incident at a time, by enabling and supporting them to talk about the incident without receiving judgment or criticism.
When should you undertake CISM?
The type of intervention used depends on the situation, the number of people involved, and their proximity to the event. The goal is to address the trauma along the general progression of defusing, debriefing, and follow up.
- Defusing is usually delivered the day of the incident before the person(s) has a chance to sleep. The defusing is designed to assure the person(s) involved that their feelings are normal, to tell them what symptoms to watch out for over the short term, and how to source additional support if needed.
- Debriefings usually take place 48–72 hours after a critical incident bringing those impacted together as a group to talk through the experience and how they are feeling, discuss coping strategies, and to highlight further services and support available to them.
- Follow-up is usually carried out within a day of the debrief, and again the week following the debriefing, as a check-in and aims to identify if symptoms have worsened over that period and if the person(s) need signposted or referred on for more specialist support.
Why choose Lena?
Lena offers the full range of CISM support, to include:
- pre-incident preparedness
- acute crisis management
- post-incident follow-up
Lena adheres to the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation (ICISF) Model of Critical Incident Stress Management and our network of specialist CISM personnel are all trained to ICSIF standards.
Our CISM practitioners, alongside Lena’s senior clinical team, will ensure the most appropriate crisis intervention tools and tactics are used to best respond to your organisation’s needs to address the situation at hand.
Customer Testimonials
[Lena’s] team responded promptly and with great empathy, ensuring that all affected employees received the necessary care and attention. The counsellors were professional, compassionate, and highly skilled, helping our team navigate through a challenging time with ease.