The World Health Organisation (WHO), describes a critical incident as an event which is sudden and unexpected and is outside of the range of normal experience. Critical incidents often involve the perception of a threat to life and can include elements of physical and emotional loss. The impact of these events can overwhelm, or threaten to overwhelm, people’s capacity to make sense of what has happened. While the majority of people would be severely upset by a critical incident, appropriate supports assists them to recover from its impact.
Any organisation or workplace can experience a critical incident, resulting in a significant psychological impact on those involved with a subsequent impact on business . Timely critical incident debriefing applies principles of psychological first aid to help individuals process events and begin to recover from the impact of the event.
Due to the nature of critical incidents, businesses and organisations may wish to consider discussing critical incident debriefing with a team of psychologists before any incident occurs. Access to critical incident debriefing can then be built into the critical incident recovery plan which makes it easier to activate debriefing if and when required.
Grant and Bernice are both experienced in critical incident debriefing and would welcome the opportunity to enter into discussions as you develop or update your critical incident recovery plan.