Critical Incident Stress Consultants

We offer comprehensive support designed to help you and your team manage stress and recover after a traumatic event.

What We Do

At CISC, we specialize in providing professional critical incident stress management (CISM) services to individuals and organizations impacted by traumatic events.

We work with clients in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area and across the country in a variety of helping positions, including hospital and healthcare professionals, first responders, organ procurement organizations (OPOs), and critical incident stress management (CISM) teams.

While people who work in helping fields have generally chosen their profession to be of service to others, they are not immune to the chronic and, sometimes, acute stress inherent in their role. We provide evidence-based strategies and techniques to help embed resilience into organizations and lead people toward healing following a critical incident.

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A critical incident can be any event that is distressing and unusual for a workplace, often unexpected, that causes normal stress reactions that overwhelm a person’s typical coping skills. By providing appropriate interventions, we’re able to help people return to their normal routine with fewer lingering symptoms.

Who We Serve

Hospitals

We support healthcare professionals in managing the emotional toll of high-pressure environments and critical incidents.

EMS & Fire

Our stress management strategies help EMS and Fire departments navigate the aftermath of traumatic events and enhance mental well-being.

OPOs

We offer tailored support for OPOs, helping staff handle the emotional challenges tied to sensitive, life-changing decisions.

CISM Teams

We empower Critical Incident Stress Management teams with tools and resources to facilitate stress debriefings and recovery for their teams.

"We believe that with professional support, communities facing adversity have the capacity to care for each other and grow in strength".

Our Services

We take the time to learn about your culture so we can recommend the services that will best meet your needs and the needs of your employees in a manner that makes sense for your organization. Our experience assisting people impacted by acute workplace stressors, critical incidents, mass disasters, and other traumatic events has taught us to be optimistic.

Intervention

Interventions are tailored to each unique incident. We offer consultation and strategic management of psychological crisis interventions, whether on-site, by phone, or via video, to help determine the target, type, and timing of the response. We also provide or lead interventions such as Crisis Management Briefings (CMBs), Defusings, Debriefings, and 1:1 psychological first aid.

Resiliency Coaching

There are times when a more individualized approach is needed for staff who feel particularly overwhelmed by a critical incident or chronic workplace stress. In these cases, we offer 1:1 resiliency coaching that consists of several discussions to create and focus on an action plan for recovery. These can be conducted in-person or virtually.

Training

Based on our consultation and needs assessment, we may recommend one or more trainings for leadership and/or staff to help embed resilience in your organization because the best time to plan for a critical incident is before one occurs. We offer trainings with a time investment ranging from one hour to two days, in-person or virtually, depending on circumstances.

Common training topics include:

  • Resiliency skills
  • Crisis intervention skills
  • CISM Basic Group and Individual Interventions
  • Psychological first aid
  • Leadership crisis intervention and communication