Crisis Management Experts

It can change the course of events. Sometimes it can help to avoid a tragic event entirely. Sometimes it can ease and shorten the period of recovery significantly. Safety managers know it and so do crisis professionals…

Pre-incident planning is a crucial part of the work of Critical Incident Stress Management Teams. During this phase, which often allows us the opportunity to interface with experts from a wide range of disciplines, protocols are designed to increase workplace safety and to manage traumatic incidents.

As Critical Incident Stress Responders, our part of the pre-incident planning effort is two-fold: To prepare management and workers to function under extreme circumstances and to increase their readiness to negotiate the emotional impact of a trauma.

During and immediately following a critical incident, demands are great and emotional resources are challenged. The traumatic event may be brief or it may be prolonged. Decisions made by management may shorten or limit the damaging effects. On-going operations may need careful monitoring, so that safety is not further compromised, until they can be shut down. Shut down may be a complicated process, that requires the undivided attention of some workers. Assistance will be needed for injured individuals and the safety of others in the vicinity of the incident must be safeguarded. One or more employees may need to be available to provide information to firefighters, paramedics and police. Contact will need to be made with the families of the injured, or deceased. The tasks are many and often need to be executed simultaneously, all while each manager and employee grapples with their own reactions to the accident, robbery, or whatever the critical incident may be.

To function effectively under these conditions, planning needs to give consideration to the range of potential critical incidents in each given industry, and to the delineation of all activities which would have to take place, should one occur. A series of trainings is then designed to teach managers and employees to function successfully, while negotiating the stress reactions that are likely to be experienced. Concrete skills to manage the emotional, behavioral and physical components of these reactions is key to these trainings. As I mentioned in my post introducing Dr. Ottenstein and his armed Robbery Survivial Skills Training, behavioral rehearsal is an important part of this pre-incident trainig phase, as knowing what to do and doing it are two different things.

Additionally, those that are prepared for the range of reactions that are common in the hours, weeks, days and months after a trauma, have the best chance for quick recovery from their traumatic exposure. To this end, a comprehensive review of post traumatic stress symptoms and syndromes is also part of the pre-incident phase. Focus on specific ways that trauma affects individuals at different life stages, with a variety of life circumstances, with previous traumatic experiences and losses, or with pre-existing emotional conditions should be included, for the training to truly be useful in to participants. Finally, self-care strategies to be implemented immediately after the traumatic occurrence and throughout the post-traumatic period should be throughly reviewed, with each participant developing her/his own plan, based on the training and their knowledge of their own reactions.

Industry and workforce specific guidelines must also be developed to assist management with return to operations after the critical incident. Procedures to assess the readiness of each employee to return to work, is the final task of pre-incident planning, which is very important to insuring that additional critical incident risk factors are not being created.

For those of us with frequent contact with the pain and anguish that surrounds critical incidents, it is indeed rewarding for our Team to be able to utilize their skills to both prevent and limit post traumatic suffering. We forsee a time coming when pre-incident planning and education will be a standard part of safety planning and orientation in the corporate environment, as is now occurring in post 9/11 public safety initiatives.