TRAUMA MANAGEMENT
Best practice in responding to workplace critical incidents
What is a Critical Incident?
A critical incident is an event which has a stressful impact large enough to overwhelm the usually effective coping resources of an individual or group. An event is usually traumatic if it is sudden, unexpected or threatening and is generally outside the realm of usual, human experience. The event usually challenges, a person’s physical and/or psychological safety (from the individual’s perspective) and results in an overwhelming reaction either at the time or subsequent to the incident. Some examples of such incidents include:–
- Major accident or safety incidents (often but not always involving serious injury of death)
- Sudden death in the workplace/medical emergency
- Criminal activities such as hold ups
- Physical assaults
- Suicide in the workplace
- Verbal and/or physical aggression (clients, customers, work colleagues)
- Needle stick injury
- Bomb threat
- Sabotage or arson
- Fire, natural disaster or other emergency
Many of these events may involve serious or even fatal physical injury. However this is not necessary for an event to be traumatic. It is often the potential for physical or psychological harm which is traumatic – the “what ifs”.
Drake WorkWise deals with over 100 critical incidents each year. We can assist to effectively manage a traumatic incident in the workplace, providing appropriate and effective trauma counselling to staff. Our objective is to minimise the impact of the incident on staff and facilitate return to work and the timely resumption of normal operations. The Drake WorkWise Trauma Management model has been developed in the light of recent research and has clear, demonstrable benefits. Our reporting system ensures a complete record of interventions to ensure Duty of Care is discharged.
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