What is Critical Incident Stress?

A critical incident is any situation faced by emergency service personnel that causes them to experience unusually strong emotional reactions with the potential to interfere with their ability to function at the scene or later.

A Critical Incident has been defined by Dr. Jeffery Mitchell as "Any situation faced by emergency service personnel that causes them to experience unusually strong emotional reactions which have the potential to interfere with their ability to function either at the scene or later... All that is necessary is that the incident, regardless of the type, generates unusually strong feelings in the emergency workers"*

Some examples of critical incidents are suicides, death or serious injury to an emergency worker, mass casualty incidents, media interest in an event, prolonged events, injury or death of children, and natural disasters.

Stress and the Emergency Service Worker

Emergency service workers (EMT's, Police, Firefighters, Dispatchers, and ER Doctors and Nurses) face stressful events everyday. The work they choose to perform can be emotionally draining, physically difficult and a threat to their personal safety. Yet this same work is seen as extremely rewarding, sometimes exciting and a method for fulfilling some personal needs.

Emergency service work presents the worker with a constant dose of low to moderate level and an occasional dose of high level stress that can cause the emergency service worker to have the symptoms of stress reactions. These symptoms include fatigue, nausea, intestinal upsets, memory loss, concentration problems, problem-solving difficulties, anxiety, fears, depression, identification with victims, nightmares, flashbacks, and fear of repetition of a stressful event.

*Mitchell, Jeffery T. ; When Disaster Strikes...The Critical Incident Stress Debriefing Process; JEMS; January, 1983, pp36-39.