Critical Incident Management (CIM)
Critical Incident management (also known as psychological first aid) is essential for organisations to reduce the potential longer term Impact for their employees, absenteeism and related workflow Issues. Our approach focuses on the preparedness of organisations, the learning tools for decision makers and those actively managing Incidences, offering adequate assistance to those affected by any of the critical situations that have occurred.
Offering immediate expert and professional emergency response in times of crisis is a key factor of containing the longer-term consequences. The critical incident management program is designed to prepare your organization establishing organizational preparedness and sufficient skill for site management to deal with arising emergencies as much as providing specific support at group and individual level handling exposure to trauma.
Trauma is one of the most disruptive emotional reactions an individual can experience.
Generated as a psychological response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event it overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope, causing feelings of helplessness, diminishing their sense of self and their ability to feel a full range of emotions and experiences.
The experience of trauma is quite personal and differs among individuals. That is why trauma-care professionals will focus on the reaction to the situation and one’s perception about it, not the situation itself.
In its clinical form, trauma can generate Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. A psychologically impairing condition manifested through nightmares, mentally re-living the event, feelings’ suppression, altered anxiety state, changes in mood or thinking patterns, etc
Due to this very psychologically intrusive and powerful nature of trauma, it can greatly impair the lives of affected individuals, sometimes up to the point of making them unfunctional at personal or professional level. This is the reason why many organisations seek support in being prepared and request professional interventions aimed at helping personnel to cope with potentially traumatic situations and their consequences. Such programs are generally known as ‘Critical Incident Management’ or CIMs.
Model
The scope of the CCS CIM model is to proactively provide response-readiness tools to our clients as well as taking adequate reactive actions in the aftermath of an incident. Hence our CIM model has a bifocal approach: Preparedness and Intervention.
Preparedness
Experience has shown that site management is never prepared enough to get things right at once. Only continued awareness building, and strategic simulation exercises develop the needed expertise. The leadership skills needed to manage both the human and the organizational side of a crisis are quite different from those needed in day-to-day operations. Planning and adequate training of key personnel are therefore essential to be truly able to handle an arising emergency situation and to coordinate a meaningful response.
Intervention
CCS operates a 24/7 available response team of trauma-care experts able to intervene onsite or online according to the degree of emergency required. Our focus is on the human factor issues such trauma containment, using modern individual and group techniques, offering individual support, and working with the site management.
Our post-trauma care clinical approach is an adaptive, short-term psychological support process that focuses solely on an immediate and identifiable problem. It is deployed by highly qualified professional with years of experience in the field, in both group and individual formats, based on severity of exposure and identified vulnerabilities. Its purpose is to enable people to return to their daily routine more quickly and with less likelihood of experiencing post-traumatic stress reactions.