Use of a team immediate debrief tool to improve staff well‐being after potentially traumatic events

It is inevitable that anaesthetic, theatre and ICU staff will encounter critical incidents, deaths in theatre and other potentially traumatic events during their working lives [1]. Despite introducing trauma risk management (TRiM) at our hospital, a peer support tool that helps staff prepare for and recover from potentially traumatic events [1, 2], we identified four issues which we believed were negatively affecting staff well-being following such events: firstly, staff were not always aware of the normal reactions they might experience after a potentially traumatic event and the steps they could take to mitigate these; secondly, senior staff often found it difficult to carry out short team debriefs immediately after such traumatic cases, especially if they were affected themselves, adding to their anxiety; thirdly, our hospital TRiM system was not being utilised to its maximal potential, with TRiM assessments not always requested following potentially traumatic events; and fourthly, incomplete lists of staff involved in a potentially traumatic event resulted in some staff missing TRiM assessments and the subsequent support available to them.We therefore worked closely with our clinical psychologists to develop a cognitive aid that could be used by frontline clinicians immediately after a potentially traumatic event, a team immediate debrief (TID) tool, with information about ‘psychological first aid’ printed on the back (Fig. 1).