Psychosocial emergency care in companies – an inventory on the implementation in Germany

Status:

ongoing

Aims:

With a stronger focus on mental health in the work environment, an increased amount of attention is being paid to mental strain due to sudden emergencies (accidents, crises, or unexpected extreme situations) as a topic of occupational health and safety in the work place. To promote the psychological stability of the affected, the German Social Accident Insurance (Deutsche Gesetzliche Unfallversicherung, DGUV) recommends the implementation of psychosocial emergency care in companies (cf. DGUV 306-001, 206-017, 206-018, 206-023).

However, based on the scientific literature and the current state of knowledge it is not possible to show which models and procedures companies currently choose to enable psychosocial emergency care for their employees. Additionaly, there is little evidence on which occupational parameters can constitute good psychosocial care for employees after emergency situations in a work context. So that accident insurance institutions can support companies in providing their employees with good care after sudden emergencies, both of these questions should be scientifically elicited.

The research project aims to register and describe how companies implement psychosocial care after sudden emergency situations at work. In addition, occupational factors and policies that influence this positively or negatively are to be documented. The aim is to provide accident insurance institutions with reliable results for their prevention work. This can then be used to support arguments for raising awareness among companies as well as advise them during the implementation of psychosocial care for sudden emergency situations at work. Furthermore, the results on inhibiting and facilitating factors can provide information on which of the different models are experienced as helpful by the companies, considering company size and sector. These findings can also be included in advice given to accident insurance institutions of companies and can be incorporated into information media.

Activities/Methods:

The inventory of psychosocial emergency care in companies will be based on a cross-sectional study including different surveys directed at various participating target groups:

• Companies: Survey of representative sub-samples depending on sector and company size
• accident insurance institutions: screening survey including all institutions as well as selected intensive surveys
• volunteer teams in psychosocial emergency care: Analysis of deployment statistics (complete survey) conducted for the years starting in 2015. In addition, intensive surveys will be conducted in selected psychosocial emergency care teams (1 per federal state) on deployments with occupational indications.
• external providers: a focus will be laid on independent providers and inter-company providers who offer their services freely or who already work together with companies or accident insurance institutions.

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