| Industry First Research - Effectiveness of Critical Incident Response. | June 30, 2005 |
A study into the effectiveness of the Critical Incident Response service is taking place as a joint initiative between Seed and Toll Rail. Toll has been using the service for five years. Professor Tony Taylor from Victoria University (Wellington, NZ), a world-renowned trauma psychologist is consulting on the project, which is expected to take up to two years to complete.
Richard Sawrey, Manager of Counselling and Psychological Services at Seed says, “The anecdotal feedback is positive from the individuals who have received help. However, we need to be sure that the service we provide is effective and supporting the individual’s recovery”.
Richard also said that there had been very little applied research into Critical Incident response worldwide, so the study was important to the industry and the academic community.
The idea for the project was raised with Toll about a year ago. Since then the project design has been approved and the gathering of data has begun. The information gathering is via a postal survey and is expected to take at least 12 months to gather sufficient data for the study.
There are three researchers working on this project. Richard Sawrey is the project leader. Professor Taylor is providing the expert academic knowledge, and Sandra Johnston, Manager the Critical Incident Service at Seed, is providing the industry knowledge and expertise.
Apart from testing the effectiveness of the CI service, Richard mentioned that the research was part of a commitment by Seed to the development of best practice: “During the course of the project we hope to discover ways of making the service better so that after people are exposed to potentially traumatic events, the negative effects are minimised and they can be restored to effective functioning”.
For any queries relating to the project, contact Richard Sawrey:
Telephone 04 4722 331. Email richard.sawrey@seed.co.nz
