Critical incident stress management and the assaulted staff action program

Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM; Everly & Mitchell, 1999) is a clinical and administrative approach to address the psychological sequelae in the aftermath of critical incidents. CISM is a comprehensive, multicomponent crisis intervention procedure that spans pre-incident preparedness to acute crisis to post-crisis follow up. The Assaulted Staff Action Program (Flannery, 1998) is a voluntary, system-wide, peer-help, CISM crisis intervention program for employee victims of patient assault. ASAP's crisis intervention procedures and empirical results are used to illustrate the potential power and effectiveness of CISM approaches. The implications are discussed.