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1. Why do you need to debrief after a critical incident?
What is debriefing?
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary provides the following definition for debrief: ‘to carefully review upon completion’. Its origin lies in the military as a means of learning from rapidly changing situations, addressing mistakes and putting changes into place (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2023).
The debrief: a source of ‘must have’ information after a critical incident
Debriefing with staff, international students and other internal and external stakeholders after a critical incident provides an opportunity to learn and improve processes in place.
What are the pros and cons of debriefing?
A debrief has the potential to be uncomfortable as people re-live the critical incident and what they could and couldn’t have done better. Why do we debrief? What are the pros and cons in getting the information you need? Note down immediate benefits: For example, capturing immediate recall; accurately retrieving key events; adding questions and insights for future reference.
Is there a best time to debrief after a critical incident?
When and how often you decide to debrief following a critical incident will depend on the critical incident. Too many or too few debriefs can reduce the effectiveness of carrying out a debrief. The first debrief during or immediately following the critical incident provides an opportunity to decide on the timing for further debriefs.
The Victorian government’s Resources Guide for Critical Incident Stress and Debriefing in Human Service Agencies (1997) recommends that the first debriefing occurs 12 – 72 hours after the critical incident. In this way international students and staff have recovered from the immediate impact of the critical incident and have begun to assimilate their experience.
As part of the Critical Incident Management Team or international student support team, you will have the opportunity to debrief regularly throughout the critical incident, as you carry out the processes in your critical incident plan. In this way you can review and address gaps as the critical incident unfolds.
Debriefings held during or immediately after a critical incident are likely to be very emotive and feelings-based compared to a debrief held in the days following the critical incident. In some instances, there may also be confusion arising from a situation that happened immediately before the critical incident. A skilled debrief facilitator will have the skills to identify and separate any confusion between events. (Department of Human Services, p. 23).
Debriefs provide opportunities for practitioners and international students to reflect on the critical incident with hindsight. This may provide new insights and clarity around the critical incident. In many cases debriefs may pick up mental health issues which have manifested themselves over a period of time following the critical incident. Therefore, follow up debriefs provide an opportunity to arrange referrals to counselling or appropriate agencies (Human Resources Branch, p.25).
It may seem that there is no good time for a debrief after a critical incident as you are time poor and living on adrenalin. However, it is important to make the time before you and other people forget everything that happened.
“Following the second Christchurch earthquake we didn’t have time to debrief – we were in survival mode as everyone was impacted in one way, shape or form, personally and professionally. When we did debrief several months after the event – we had lost the opportunity to learn from the immediacy of the situation”. Anonymous.
What key things do you need in place to carry out a debriefing session after a critical incident?
Debriefing provides essential learnings after a critical incident as it gives you a wealth of useful information you need to review your critical incident plans and procedures. Therefore, the way you carry out a debrief plays a vital role in your review process. There are some key components to consider so you get the most out of your debriefing session.
Skilled facilitation
A debrief is only useful if key information is learnt about the critical incident. A skilled facilitator is therefore instrumental in bringing all the different strands together to build a complete picture of what happened. Let’s look at some of the techniques you or an external facilitator can use to get the most out of your debrief:
TOP TIPS
- Create a safe debriefing environment which is supportive and non-judgemental. People need to know that they can talk openly without repercussions or blame.
- Engage with all your staff and international students so that everyone has a voice as everyone has something to contribute. Some of your international students may be hesitant to speak so try to use direct or reflective questions which need a response. It may be useful to use interpreters as students will find it easier to put their thoughts into words in their first language.
- It can be productive to allow organic reflective discussions to happen as it gives international students an opportunity to discuss their shared feelings and experiences. This information can provide learnings on international student understanding of what to do in an emergency. As a debrief facilitator you have an opportunity to explore these issues whilst, at the same time, keeping discussions outcomes-focussed (Stanford Medicine, n.d.)
- Understanding cross-cultural communication and non-verbal communication skills is key when working with international students. In this way you will recognise cues and manage interactions between your debrief participants as you understand what is not being verbalised.
- Provide information on stress related symptoms so that staff and international students can manage and get help if and when mental and stress related symptoms develop. Acknowledge that it is not a sign of weakness to ask for help (Human Resources Branch, 1997).
Choosing a debriefing model which best suits your needs
The size and complexity of your critical incident will dictate the best model to use to get the information you need.
Initial assessment – Defusing the situation
In the first instance you need to know how people are coping in the aftermath of the critical incident and provide them with the support they need to recover. If staff and international students were closely associated with the critical incident then arrange for counselling services, Victim Support or other support agencies to assist supporting affected students or staff through the aftermath. Dependent upon the emotional state of those you wish to debrief with directly after the critical incident, will dictate whether you arrange for a trained counsellor to be present when carrying out your debriefing session.
“You want to know how your staff and international students are coping immediately after a critical incident. Your immediate task is supporting them to give them time to recover and digest what happened. Try to meet with them in person rather than by telephone so that you can see their body language and emotional state. This is also a time for you to put a team together to manage the day-to-day international student support functions as you will be tied up managing follow-up to the critical incident. It is easy to overstep your boundaries immediately after a critical incident so you need to get further professional assistance and/or advice to assist, support and provide independent intervention at the time when it is most needed.” (Team Leader, International Student Support, tertiary).
For the purposes of this topic, we will look at some examples of debriefing models which you can use depending upon the size and complexity of the critical incident. These include:
- RRA - Rapid Rural Appraisal
- Focus groups
- One-to-one or small group
“The key, therefore, is to match the type of methodology with the kind of information that is needed. In many cases, the best approach will involve combining several different methods in order to put together the most complete picture of a given situation.” (CRS, n.d., p. 4).
Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA)
The RRA method is a powerful technique to use in large complex critical incidents. It was originally used by development agencies seeking to determine relevant information for development projects. The principle is to decide in advance what key areas/outcomes are important and then choose appropriate listeners for those areas. Each listener will listen for information in their particular spheres of interest only and take appropriate notes. The debriefing session is led by a skilled facilitator who can ensure that all outcomes are covered. After the debrief, responses are collated to get an overall picture of all the different components of the critical incident, how they act independently of each other and where they interlink. For your institutional purposes, listeners could comprise representatives from the Critical Incident Management Response Team, accommodation services, student counselling, international student support, facilities management, health insurer, catering etc. The learnings from all the different perspectives will provide the information you need to review your critical incident plan, policy, processes and procedures.
Following a major incident at our institution a few years ago, we participated in a group debriefing session run along RRA lines. There were several people present representing those whose areas were affected by the death of a student. We were all assigned roles and told that we only had to listen and record anything that was related to our respective roles. What we heard were learnings for our own areas. It was such a powerful learning experience when we collated our notes as we could see where there were linkages and where we could work together in the future.
University Chaplain.
Focus groups
In the case of a large critical incident where there are a diverse range of people whose views need to be taken into account, consider the use of creating several smaller groups. In this way, those sharing common experiences are placed together into groups and it allows for everyone to be heard. Questions can be related to the various groupings and their shared experiences (Human Resources Branch, 1997).
One-to-one or small group debriefing sessions
Sometimes it is not appropriate to carry out a large-scale group debriefing session as some staff or students may be unable to face a large group setting and need the security of an individual debriefing session (Human Resources Branch, 1997). A one-to-one or small group debriefing session will also be more appropriate when the critical incident is small in nature and involves less people. In this way, you may only want to meet with your team members or one or two other staff or students separately and ask questions to learn about specific aspects of the critical incident in a small, safe and supportive environment. Debriefing with your team can bring your team together as they share the same experience of working with international students during a critical incident. This provides learning opportunities for dealing with a critical incident in the future.
2. Be clear – what outcomes do you want your debrief to achieve?
Following a critical incident, time is limited for everyone, as international student support staff will be on the front line and in survival mode meeting the immediate needs of their international students. As time is limited for everyone you need to be very clear on the objectives you want your debrief to achieve. Knowing your outcomes will determine the questions you ask. Underpinning any debrief there are a few key criteria to meet in order to get an overview and learnings from the overall critical incident (Department of Human Services, 1997).
- Acknowledge what everyone has been through.
- Set the house rules around being non-judgemental and confidentiality. Using the Chatham House Rule allows participants to share the information from the debrief session afterwards but they cannot share the names of meeting participants, nor what they said.
- Recognise and appreciate what worked well. Take the time to acknowledge and thank people for what went well.
- Don’t hide what didn’t work well. This needs to be discussed openly and this is not a time for blame but an opportunity to learn from the experience.
- Why didn’t it work? This requires root-cause analysis and drilling down to find the underlying reasons why something didn’t work. If answers are not forthcoming then try asking direct or reflective questions. International students may not be forthcoming as to underlying reasons why something did not work due to ‘loss of face’. A skilled cross-cultural communicator and/or an interpreter may assist in exploring the root causes.
- What do you need to change in the future? This is an opportunity to take your learnings to review your current policy, processes and procedures and discuss what needs to be put in place in the future.
As part of the debrief process, you need to get to the root cause in order to learn, review and make changes. If you find that it is hard getting to the root cause of ‘what didn’t work’ and ‘why didn’t it work’ then try the 5 Whys which is an effective tool for root cause analysis. Each time you are given an answer to ‘what’ or ‘why’ something didn’t work then ask the question ‘why ’up to five times. In this way, as you drill down, things may come to light highlighting where improvements can be made. As international student support staff are working with international students the 5 Whys may reveal underlying issues in relation to cross-cultural communication issues which need to be addressed.
Debriefing scenario-based learning
Using the above criteria let’s apply them in context to the following debriefing scenarios to provide learning opportunities for your debriefing review process:
- Critical incident plan
- International student understanding of what to do in a critical incident
- Self-review.
A. Critical incident plan
The Ministry of Education’s Traumatic Incidents: Managing Student and Staff Wellbeing – A Guide for School Crisis Management Teams suggests that the Critical Incident Management Team meet following the critical incident to debrief their critical incident plans’ procedures. In this way they can ask the following questions:
- What worked well?
- Take the time to acknowledge what worked well and thank those who did a good job. For international student support staff who were working 24/7 with their international students, your institution could recognise staff dedication by giving staff a day off or time off in lieu for additional hours worked.
- What parts of the plan did not work and why? What were the barriers to it working well?
- It may reveal that communications could have been better managed around the timing of communications to international students’ parents, various stakeholders and the media or that there was a breakdown in internal communications, so that information was not shared within the institution.
- Were any essential resources unavailable and why? How could this be rectified in the future?
- Students may not have had their mobile phones with them or were not answering their phones. This could result in a change to your mobile phone policy whereby students must have their mobile phones with them at all times, have them topped up and answer any phone calls or texts from the school.
- What needs to change in order for your Critical Incident Plan to be more effective in the future? Is there sufficient reference to the additional needs of international students in your institution’s critical incident plan?
B. International student understanding of what to do in a critical incident
Scenario: Following a critical incident involving a fire in a student flat, it has been brought to your attention that some of your international students in the flat were unaware of what to do in an emergency. Given this information, you want to review the information given to students to improve their understanding of fire safety and what to do in an emergency. After the fire incident you hold a focus group with a small group of students who were in the student flat at the time and want to share their experience. You have a trained counsellor on hand to assist, help, guide and support if needed.
You could structure your debrief according to the questions below:
Question: What worked well? They escaped the fire – how did they manage to escape the fire? Did they have a fire evacuation plan in place?
- Answer: Students in the flat next door woke them up and called the fire brigade. They had no evacuation plan in place.
Question: What didn’t work well? This is not a time for blame but for learning from the experience.
- Answer: They didn’t have working smoke detectors in their flat. No-one in their flat called the fire service.
Question: Why didn’t the smoke detectors work? Why did no-one in their flat call the fire service? If answers are not forthcoming then try asking directed or reflective questions.
- Answer: They didn’t know about changing the smoke detector batteries twice a year. No-one in the flat knew to phone 111 in an emergency and ask for the fire service. They only knew the emergency number in their home country.
Question to self: According to the above debrief questions, what do you need to change in the future? This is an opportunity to review current practice and discuss what processes and procedures need to be implemented for the future.
Tip: Improve our orientation and learning opportunities with tailored critical incident preparedness messaging. Contact Points: Enabling international students during critical incidents provides useful insight into the reasons why international students are not prepared for critical incidents and how to overcome their lack of preparedness.
These insights can be used in conjunction with strategies from The CI Model for Intercultural Contact to deliver orientation information in a tailored, comprehensible way to support international student uptake (see the second CI: Comprehensible input).
C. Self-review
The critical incident is over and life is beginning to return to normal. Now is the time for you to attend to yourself. The Ministry of Education’s Traumatic Incidents: Managing Student and Staff Wellbeing – A Guide for School Crisis Management Teams reminds us to “Don’t forget yourself”. As part of this this you can carry out a pact with yourself to:
- Acknowledge what you have been through and what went well.
- Acknowledge what didn’t go well but don’t beat yourself up about it. What did you learn from the experience?
- How are you feeling within yourself now that you have had time to reflect on the critical incident?
- Have you negotiated with your institution to get time off in lieu to recover from working 24/7?
- What is your plan going forward to incorporate Te Whare Tapa Whā’s physical, mental, spiritual and family dimensions post-critical incident?
Te whare tapa whā and wellbeing
Te Whare Tapa Whā a holistic Maori model of health whereby you can support your overall wellbeing by looking after aspects of your physical, mental, spiritual and family needs. It is only too easy when you are in the midst of a critical incident looking after your staff and international students to overlook taking care of yourself. Professional boundaries is an underdeveloped area in the international education sector. Build time into your days and weeks after a critical incident to nurture your four pillars:
Taha tinana (physical health) – find time to walk during the day and escape your office desk and emails. As things return to normal, catch up on sleep and eat proper meals.
Taha wairua (spiritual health) – find time to ‘go within’, be still and connect with yourself.
Taha whānau (family health) – find time to meet with family and friends and enjoy connecting and doing things together.
Taha hinengaro (mental health) – find time to ‘switch off’ from work and do something for yourself. Learn some stress relieving techniques which you can do when you find yourself under stress.
3. Summary
The review process after a critical incident provides essential learnings to better understand what happened: how the critical incident was managed; what was done; what needs to be changed to better meet similar events in the future and how to support our international students and staff throughout the process. This topic Debriefing critical incidents explored the role of debriefing in the review process as a means of gaining learnings from the critical incident.
We explored the need to debrief after a critical incident and the pros and cons of carrying out a debrief. Timing plays a part in the debrief process as carrying out a debrief too early means that people have not had an opportunity to assimilate what happened. Follow up debriefing sessions allow for a period of reflection and may indicate when post-critical incident stress is manifesting itself in students and staff.
We learnt the key things to have in place to carry out a debriefing session after a critical incident. This is dependent upon the size and complexity of the critical incident. Debriefing with a large group of participants can use debrief techniques using the Rapid Rural Appraisal Method whereby listening is aligned to roles or spheres of interest. Debriefing can be equally effective in one-to-one and small groups when a more supportive inclusive debrief is required.
Debriefing sessions provide learning opportunities for reviewing critical incident processes after a critical incident so we learnt that knowing our objectives will determine the questions we ask. We explored some outcome focussed scenarios and questions we could ask to meet our outcomes and find solutions.
Throughout the topic the voice of practitioners played a part in sharing their knowledge and experience around the importance of carrying out a debrief following a critical incident. Learnings gained from experience provide knowledge to review our critical incident plans and processes so that we are better prepared for events in the future.
4. Acknowledgements
Learning from the voices of experience played an important role in this topic. I would like to thank the following people for their contribution and dedication in caring for and supporting our international students – Sylvia Hooker and Terry McGrath and respondents to ISANA NZ’s ‘Critical Incident Management Questionnaire’.
5. References and resources
Beard, Chris (2020), ‘Introducing the CI model for intercultural contact’, Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration, 4:2, pp. 235–247. https://doi.org/10.1386/tjtm_00024_1
Catholic Relief Services. (n.d.). RRA Manual. Retrieved from http://courses.washington.edu/pbaf531/CRS_RRA_Manual.pdf
Chatham House. (n.d.). Chatham House Rule. Retrieved from https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/chatham-house-rule
Gomes, C., Chang, S., Guy, M., Patrao, F., & He, S., Contact Points: Enabling international students during critical incidents. Retrieved from http://www.isana.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/pressed-quality-spread-v4.pdf
Health Navigator New Zealand. (n.d.). Te Whare Tapa Whā and wellbeing. Retrieved https://www.healthnavigator.org.nz/healthy-living/t/te-whare-tapa-wh%C4%81-and-wellbeing/
Human Resources Branch, Victorian Department of Human Resources. (1997). Resource Guide for Critical Incident Stress and Debriefing in Human Services Agencies. Retrieved from https://www.vgls.vic.gov.au/client/en_AU/search/asset/1159612/0
ISANA NZ. (n.d.) Critical Incident Kit. Retrieved from https://www.isana.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ISANA-NZ-Critical-Incident-Kit.pdf
Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Debrief. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/debrief. Accessed 18 Jun. 2022.
Ministry of Education. (2016). Traumatic Incidents: Managing Student and Staff Wellbeing, a Guide for School Crisis Management Teams March 2016. Retrieved from https://assets.education.govt.nz/public/Documents/School/Traumatic-incidents-and-emergencies/Traumatic-incidents-schools-Guidelines-for-wellbeing.pdf
Stanford Medicine Centre for Immersive and Simulation-based Learning. (n.d.). The Art of Debriefing. Retrieved from https://cisl.stanford.edu/design-a-program/create-an-effective-curriculum/art-of-debriefing.html
Sundheim, D. (2015). Debriefing: A Simple Tool to Help Your Team Tackle Tough Problems. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2015/07/debriefing-a-simple-tool-to-help-your-team-tackle-tough-problems#:~:text=Debriefing%20is%20a%20structured%20learning,or%20changes%20on%20the%20field
