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What to do when an incident happens?
What to do when an incident happens?
When an incident in the workplace happens a hot debrief often takes place as soon as possible led by a designated professional who was present. As the hot debrief takes pace in ‘almost’ real time it is difficult to provide advice and guidance on how to run one. However, it is equally as important to arrange a cold debrief with the relevant people sometime after an incident has occurred, this may be as soon as one week or beyond a month following the incident. One useful tool to use when conducting one is the 7-minute debriefing tool. This can be populated once some scoping work around an incident has taken place and used to make a picture of progress and provide reassurance for those that were involved when the event took place. To have an effective cold debrief, you need to correctly identify who has been affected. Consider:
- Who offered care to this patient?
- Who had contact with this patient?
- Who was on shift and previous shifts?
- Have they experienced incidences like this before?
Support and understanding from colleagues is important to help people cope with emotions following an incident and on their initial return to work. Questions to consider to provide support to them in the workplace include the below. Be sure when you ask this question, that you demonstrate body language that show you want to hear the answer e.g., make eye-contact and do not ask in passing but when you in a position to stop and listen.
- Do bleep holders need to be aware of who is on shift when an incident occurs?
- PMAS need to be made aware to make contact with the staff ASAP
- When are those involved back on shift again?
- Who should you consider they reach out to for support e.g., PMA / line manager?
- Who will offer them a TRiM assessment (Trim Training & Consultancy LTD | Enhance Employee Wellbeing)?
Providing personal and emotional support to people following an incident and on their initial return to work is valuable and can be initiated by asking them the following questions. Be sure when you ask these questions, that you demonstrate body language that show you want to hear the answer e.g., make eye-contact and do not ask in passing but when you in a position to stop and listen.
- How are you feeling?
- Can I do anything to help you?
- Is anyone going to be at home when you go home?
- Is there anyone you can talk to when you go home?
- Can we do anything for you before you come back on shift?
- What do you like doing to relax and feel good? Encourage them to take time out to look after themselves.
It is important to allow time to reflect and learn from these incidents. A Learning SBAR can be used to support the learning in the workplace. There are many ways we can reflect, learn and offer compassion to each other in the workplace. There are some examples of ways to create these reflective spaces with different time allowances and group sizes at Compassion practices.