Healthcare Stress

Healthcare Stress
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Healthcare Stress
Critical incidents are highly stressful situations that cause intense stress reactions.  They are traumatic events with sufficient effects that can overwhelm an individual. The distress people working in the health care industry experience after a critical incident often hinders their ability to cope, affects their ability to adjust, and negatively impacts their ability to work. This can be attributed to normal physical and psychological reactions that place considerable pressure upon that individual.
When the stressor becomes intensely threatening or severe, it results to a heightened state of emotional, cognitive, physical and behavioral arousal referred to as Critical Incident Stress (CIS). After a prolonged period of exposure to traumatic stress, most health care professionals may experience job performance deterioration, depression, discord relationships, personality alteration and suicidal ideations (Everly & Mitchell, 1999). As Critical Incident Stress (CIS) becomes epidemic, the need for effective stress response becomes apparent. Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) is an adaptive tool designed to help people deal with Critical Incident Stress. It is a comprehensive and integrative system that consists of multiple crisis intervention elements ranging from pre-crisis phase, acute crisis phrase through to post-crisis phase.
The optimum process of using the Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) tool follows a three step approach that includes: defusing, debriefing, and follow-up. Defusing is carried out on the day of the incident and it is meant to assure the individual of the normal nature of the feeling they experience, and perhaps mention to them the kind of symptoms they should expect. Defusing is normally done informally and is limited to the persons directly involved in the incident. Defusing is meant to address immediate needs and assist individuals in coping with the incidents in the short term. For individuals directly affected by the incident debriefing is normally done as the second level of intervention. Done within 72 hours, the process helps to give the person an opportunity to vent out and talk about their experiences and discuss possible coping mechanisms. I...