In this week’s ‘Practice Matters’, Rory speaks with Karen Moore about Critical Incident debriefing.

The main points of this discussion include:

• Critical Incident debriefing is a sharp end of counselling and psychotherapy.
• It requires you to travel to where an incident has taken place and work with a group of people.
• You will only step in 48 hours after an incident to allow people some time to process events independently first.
• You are there to offer psychoeducation and help people understand their own reactions and bodily responses to an event.
• You will help people put things into chronological order and know what to do going forward.
• You offer a level of understanding that can help individuals to process what happened.
• You may need to deal with conflicts that might come from not understanding another person’s reaction to the event.
• You will most likely recommend that individuals undergo their own personal therapy if they feel they could benefit from it.
• You will need to be prepared and able to think on your feet.
• There may be instances where people begin to blame each other, and a group becomes fragmented.
• Your role is more about debriefing the situation than talking about feelings – this should be taken up in personal therapy afterwards.
• Groups should be separated by proximity to the incident to avoid vicarious trauma.
• Let managers know how the group might be feeling and what they might need going forward.
• You may encounter people experiencing moral injury/moral fracture if they have had to make a very difficult moral decision.
• Self-care and supervision are very important to ensure your own health and well-being after being so close to traumatic situations.