A critical incident is an unexpected event that causes suffering and loss and whose impact goes beyond the bounds of normal stress. An aircraft emergency, natural disaster, a company being placed in receivership, strike, merger, violence and threats are all examples of a critical incident in the workplace. Trauma occurs when a person's subjective experience of an event as life threatening triggers traumatic stress reactions, no matter whether the event is real or perceived.

A Critical Incident is a significant emotional event that, due to its nature or circumstances in which it occurs, can cause unusual psychological distress in healthy, normal people (examples could be workplace violence, robbery, natural disaster, car, bus or air accident etc)
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