Critical Incident Awareness for Employees

Course Outline

This workshop can be crucial for any business, especially those in a high-risk industry. Whether it involves a serious injury,
a death, or even just a near miss, a critical incident can have a major impact on a workplace. The training in this course is
designed to help employees respond effectively to such incidents – both on the scene and in the aftermath. In particular, it
deals with the trauma and stress that are the inevitable result of a critical incident, and which can have a major debilitating
effect on workplace morale and productivity.

Content

The workshop can be tailored to your organisational
needs and covers the following key aspects of dealing with
a critical incident:

1. Defining Normal Stress

What kind of stress do you experience day-to-day
in your work?
What are some of the ways in which you manage
day-to-day stress?
What is not normal stress?
What is positive and destructive stress?

2. Defining Critical Incidents

Identifying and understanding critical incidents
Definitions of critical incident stress
Flight or Fight response
Factors influencing stress severity in a critical incident

3. Responding to Critical Incidents

The critical incident scene
Working with people in crisis at the scene
Group reactions
Who might experience critical incident stress?
General principles of recovery
Responding to trauma – critical incidents

4. Defusing and debriefing after a critical incident

What you can do for yourself after a critical incident
What you can do to help others after a
critical incident
What the organisation can do after a critical incident

Expected Outcomes

At the end of the workshop, participants will:

Have an understanding of stress, both normal
and serious
Understand critical incidents and the critical
incident scene
Have skills to cope with a critical incident
Understand the diffusion and debriefing processes
Be able to manage critical incident stress and support
colleagues in grief