| Abstrakt: |
Purpose/goals: The purpose of this presentation is to share the experience of building a more psychologically healthy workplace, using a Critical Incidence Stress Management (CISM) team for emotional debriefing following critical, or morally distressing events. Outcome 1: Identify that critical care teams can suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)-like symptoms. Outcome 2: To learn about the Critical Incidence Stress Management system to improve staff psychological health and resiliency, whilst improving staff absenteeism and retention rates. Outcome 3: To share the experience of developing and sustaining a Critical Incident Stress Management program in an ICU setting. Session description: It is recognized that first responders such as Fire and Emergency Medical Services personnel can suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms. More recently, it is becoming increasingly known that staff and physicians who work in acute care settings can also be prone to similar PTSD symptoms, moral distress, compassion fatigue and burnout. With the intention of building a more psychologically healthy workplace, a Critical Incidence Stress Management (CISM) team was developed at the Alberta Children's Hospital, Calgary, to support staff with managing the heavy load of complex, ethically challenging and potentially traumatic cases, such as non-accidental trauma, organ donation, unanticipated deaths, resuscitations, and end-of-life care. CISM is a process that enables peers to help one another understand problems that might occur after an event. It is a formal, highly structured, and professionally recognized process for helping those involved in a critical incident to share their experiences and emotions in a peer-support environment, learn about stress reactions and symptoms and be referred for more help, if required. It is a confidential, voluntary, and educative process, sometimes called ‘psychological first aid' (American Psychological Association, 2000; Mitchell & Everly, 1993). Following the introduction of a CISM team in 2013 in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), vacant positions in the ACH PICU dropped by 75% between May 2014 and November 2016. Staff sick hours decreased by 46% between October 2015 and November 2016. While it is impossible to directly attribute these improvements to the CISM program alone, evidence suggests that some of this progress is attributed to the well-established CISM program in the unit. A site wide program was developed in 2016, and the same year, the ACH was recognized by the Canadian Critical Incident Stress Foundation as the first Canadian acute care hospital to provide CISM support hospital wide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
