TRAUMA MANAGEMENT

Most of our working life is usually spent relatively trouble free. Unfortunately, from time to time we may experience events which can be highly traumatic. These can be as a result of, for example, robberies, other violent incidents, road accidents, industrial accidents or the sudden death of a colleague to name but a few. It is very common, in fact quite normal, for people to experience an emotional or a stress reaction after such a critical incident. However, there is no set response to these incidents and people will react to them in many different ways. For some employees the reaction will be highly distressing and if the effects of trauma are not dealt with quite quickly the problem may develop into Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome which can be completely debilitating for the individual for a long period of time and take a great deal of effort to resolve. For the organisation such a critical traumatic incident can have devastating effects on performance and overall efficiency. Employees may, for example, feel they can no longer work in that job, take long term sick leave or be unable to perform particular roles. In the short term their concentration may be affected as will their ability to maintain a stable emotional response to clients or colleagues. Our fully trained and experienced psychologists can help in a number of ways.

CRITICAL INCIDENT STRESS DEBRIEFING

Debriefing is a specific technique designed to assist others in dealing with the physical or psychological symptoms that are generally associated with trauma exposure. Debriefing allows those involved with the incident to process the event and reflect on its impact. Research on the effectiveness of applied critical incident debriefing techniques has demonstrated that individuals who are provided CISD within a 24-72 hour period after the initial critical incident experience less short-term and long-term crisis reactions or psychological trauma. PsychoL staff are usually able to be on the scene of the incident within a short period of time to assess the impact on employees and to conduct a debriefing. A follow-up session is carried out several weeks after the initial incident when PsychoL staff are able to make an assessment of each individual employee's recovery and the extent to which any further intervention may be required.

MANAGEMENT OF AGGRESSION AND CONFLICT

This type of training can help reduce the affects of a violent critical incident and is designed to enable staff to respond appropriately to episodes of aggression, and to learn and practice interpersonal skills aimed towards conflict management and reducing aggressive behaviour. Our training course looks at what is generally known about aggression, its possible causes, the triggers and build up, and looks briefly at risk assessment. It examines both conflict resolution skills and the management of potentially violent situations. Self-awareness of individual employee's aggressive tendencies is investigated together with coping strategies to help with post-traumatic incident management. For more details of this training and other courses we have on offer refer to the MANDEL GROUP which is the training section of our organisation.