Supporting Your Hero: Critical Incident Stress Management Training Needs Assessment for Firefighters Spouses/Significant Others.

Abstract

The purposes of this research is to conduct a needs assessment and identify the critical incident stress management knowledge base and training platform that can provide an educational opportunity for firefighter spouses or SOs to recognize, support and deal with their hero after critical incident(s). The evaluation method used in this research was an online survey of firefighter spouses and significant others. The survey link was emailed to fire chiefs, which distributed it to their firefighters, who then emailed or shared the link with their spouse or significant other. The evaluation was done to measure the participant’s knowledge of critical incident stress, the need to develop critical incident stress management training for firefighter spouses or significant others and how best to implement the training. This paper discusses the analysis of results for both the quantitative and qualitative data collected followed by recommendations for training programs.