Critical incident stress: the role of hospital-based social work in developing a statewide intervention system for first-responders delivering emergency services.

Emotional, cognitive and behavioral stress can negatively affect the performance of fire, rescue and law enforcement personnel responding to emergency situations. Impaired professional performance in these crises not only endangers the incident victims, all involved responders and their families, but potentially the lives and property of entire communities. This article describes the major administrative and clinical leadership of a hospital-based Social Work department in implementing one of the few statewide critical incident stress debriefing teams for emergency service personnel in the United States. It represents a model for program development by other organizations.