Critical/Traumatic Incident Response

Workers who encounter or witness an abnormal, shocking critical incident or traumatic event can go into shock and/or experience stress and trauma.

Examples of critical and traumatic incidents can include:

• Death of a co-worker, either in the line-of-duty or other workplace incident
• Serious or life-threatening accident/injury to oneself or to co-workers
• A near miss that threatens the health and safety of oneself or of co-workers
• Suicide of a co-worker
• Loss of a patient after rescue attempts
• Death of or critical incident involving children
• Violence inflicted on oneself or on a co-worker
• Violent crime in or near the workplace
• Events with excessive media interest
• Natural disasters that affect work

Work-related critical incidents can involve your employees or co-workers, other individuals from your organization, or someone related to them, and can occur in the workplace, at a work function, or even outside of the formal work setting. Certain occupations such a paramedics, fire fighters, police officers, security guards, and nurses are also more readily exposed to traumatic incidents due to the nature of their work. Other critical incidents may involve individuals in your life that are not related to your work. Such may include teammates from your sports club, classmates from your school, members of your community, or others.

Individuals who witnessed, endured, are made aware of, or even vicariously became aware of such a traumatic incident could experience shock, denial, anger, rage, sadness, confusion, terror, shame, distress, fear, paranoia, anxiety, grief, loss, loss of control over their environment, or suicidal thoughts. They may also experience physical effects such as sleep and eating disturbances, nightmares, profuse sweating, illness, and flashbacks. Some effects may become apparent immediately, while others will develop gradually. The traumatized employee could become overwhelmed and unable to cope with daily activities. In turn, their concentration, engagement, relationships, performance, and attendance at work could seriously suffer.