Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM)

What is CISM?

Critical Incident Stress Management is a structured intervention, designed to accelerate the recovery of emergency responder personnel. Any traumatic event that leads to an unusually powerful stress reaction, and overwhelms the person’s ability to adjust emotionally is a critical incident. Critical incident Debriefings are supplemented with demobilization, defusing, briefings, and one-on-one encounters.

There is no doubt that working in emergency services exposes workers to numerous stressors. Critical incidents include, but are not limited to, deaths in the line of duty, coworkers committing suicide, significant events involving relatives or knowing the victims, excessive media interest, and disaster or mass casualty events.

Traumatic experiences are long remembered by involved individuals. Those experiences can affect people in ways that alter their future functioning. Law Enforcement along with all emergency workers observe violence, injury and death almost daily. Each traumatic experience leaves behind an impression that has to be processed and managed or they become a distress for the emergency worker. Spokane County Sheriff’s Office and Spokane County Regional CISM Teams offer the opportunity for emergency workers involved in a common incident to come together and debrief. It allows for the opportunity to clear up questions and rumors. It speeds the recovery period to resume normalcy.

Why have CISM?

 We have to provide support to keep our emergency responders healthy, so they can keep us safe and healthy. Dedicated to emergency work, they experience death, violence, crisis, and emotional fatigue. This can add up to unusually strong emotional reactions that could interfere with the ability to function.

We have to restore the health and environment of the affected individuals to decrease traumatic stress effects, and to speed recovery and productivity when they do occur. An important feature is helping the individual recognize that the danger has passed and the need to react also has passed. It is important to remember that the individual is normal, the reactions are normal, only the event is abnormal.

Who is on the team?

The CISM Team is made up of peers from all city and county entities. We have mental health professional support and chaplains. The peers include, but are not limited to law enforcement, fire, school, ambulance, dispatch, and many others. There is a lot of time and commitment that must be given by this group. Debriefers are experienced, trained, and certified through the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation.

What is our role?

We provide several different avenues of support. During large drawn-out events, we respond and function within the incident command structure as a supportive role. We watch for physical needs and monitor those workers still actively involved in the incident. The team leader reports to the incident commander on the physical well being of the workers. We provide an arena for venting and an opportunity for personnel to know that they are not alone in the way they are feeling or in their perception of the situation.

For more information on Spokane CISM, click here to go to their website