Critical Incident Stress Intervention Essay

The literature shows two types of stress management interventions (SMI), which are categorized as organizational and individual SMIs. Based on the literature, some researchers have conducted studies to debate which intervention is most effective at reducing stress within the workplace. For instance, some research shows that organizational SMIs are effective due to improving employees’ morale, having more of a long term impact, and it provides more extensive resources (Biron & Karanika-Murray, 2014; Dollard & Gordon, 2014; Pack, 2012). One example of an effective organizational SMI is critical incident stress debriefing (CISD). CISD is an intervention that is implemented within an organization through the critical incident stress management

For example, CISD can be an intervention used with social workers who work in the child welfare system. Based on the trauma that a family or a child experiences, a social worker has to be the person to either remove a child or place a child in foster care. These types of critical incidents can happen repeatedly, with the child and the family. Pack (2012) explains how the social work profession experiences trauma, grief, and various crisis events on a daily basis. Dealing with the child welfare system is an example of trauma that calls for immediate debriefing after a critical incident occurs. Hence, having CISD as an organizational SMI will allow the employees to discuss potential critical incidents and take a preventative step towards reducing their stress

Biron and Karanika-Murray (2012) describe how an intervention process evaluation can help provide reasoning behind the outcome of organizational SMIs in order to evaluate its effectiveness. For instance, there are two types of evaluations, formative and summative evaluation. Formative evaluation will identify the weakness within the program and provide ways to revise the intervention to strengthen and improve the program (Biron & Karanika-Murray, 2012). In contrast, summative evaluation evaluates the outcome of the intervention and how effective it was within the program. However, a key aspect that is not fully discussed within the literature is the external factors that can negatively influence and impact an organization (Biron & Karanika-Murray, 2012; Dextras-Gauthier, Marchand, & Haines, 2012; Pack, 2012). For instance, government and state related regulations or requirements for productivity can increase the stress levels of an organization and change the standards set to reduce workplace stress. This aspect is crucial to consider because social work organizations have external factors that can change, which means that the organizational SMIs will have to also evaluate these external forces to ensure the employees’ health and wellbeing remains