Marie Malek-Robinson, CEAP,SAP,CTAC-ACP
Illinois Department of Transportation
2300 South Dirksen Parkway
Springfield, Illinois 62764
(217)534-7885
A growing need for Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) is due to the rise in the incidents of workplace trauma
and other critical events. At the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) our comprehensive program is designed to
assist employees in coping with the impact of unpredictable incidents.
A sudden traumatic event that produces intense emotional reactions and has the potential to interfere with individual and
organizational functioning is defined as a Critical Incident. On-the-job events or situations that occur suddenly and are
often outside the control of the individual employee can include: line-of-duty deaths, serious line-of-duty injuries,
employee suicide or sudden death away from work, disasters, events that attract intense media attention, or events that
seriously threaten the lives or health of responders, are defined as Critical Incidents.
The CISD, as developed by Mitchell (Mitchell and Everly, l995), is a confidential, nonjudgmental, evaluative discussion of
thoughts, reactions, and feelings resulting from an incident. It mitigates the impact of stress by allowing everyone involved
to ventilate his or her feelings.
In this interactive session we will demonstrate and discuss actual critical incidents that occurred at IDOT, how the plan
was developed to assist our employees, putting the plan into action, what makes it work, and the benefits derived by both
employer and employee of getting back to normal as quickly as possible.
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