Phase three · PCIS
The Post Critical Incident Seminar
A residential program of three to four days for members who are still carrying the effects of a critical incident months or years later, when ordinary coping and brief support have not been enough. It is delivered by clinicians and trained peers together, and partners are invited to attend.
days, residential, paced to allow education, group work, individual sessions, and rest.
teams working as one: clinicians, plus peers who have attended a seminar themselves.
The model began at the FBI and now runs in several U.S. states and in Finland.(McNally & Solomon, 1999; Korpela & Nordquist, 2024a)
Where it came from
The seminar was developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the mid 1980s to support agents involved in shootings and other critical incidents (McNally & Solomon, 1999). It has since been adopted by law enforcement programs in South Carolina, Kentucky, and Texas (Evans, 2023; Kentucky Department of Criminal Justice Training, n.d.; Uhl et al., 2023), and a modified version has been run in Finland for police and emergency service personnel (Korpela & Nordquist, 2024a; Sumanen, 2020).
Dan is trained in the PCIS model through the Warriors Rest Foundation in Oklahoma, which runs seminars for law enforcement and first responders.
Who it is for
- Members whose reactions to a specific incident, or to years of accumulated exposure, are still affecting sleep, work, relationships, or health.
- Members returning to work after a psychological injury.
- Partners of those members, who are invited to attend parts of the seminar with them.
The seminar is not a replacement for ongoing treatment, and it is not a debrief held days after an incident. It is a step for members who need more than brief support, and it ends with a plan for follow-up care in the community.
How the seminar works
Clinicians and peers, working as one team
Clinicians lead the education blocks and the debriefing, meet individually with every participant, and monitor risk throughout. Peers who have attended a seminar before run the small groups and offer informal support in between (Lamphear, 2011; Uhl et al., 2023).
| Component | What happens |
|---|---|
| Education | How the brain and body respond to trauma, sleep, stress, and healthy coping, so participants understand what they have been experiencing. |
| Debriefing | A structured critical incident stress debriefing facilitated by clinicians. |
| Small groups | Groups organized by theme, such as a specific incident type, grief, or cumulative stress, and run by trained peers. |
| Individual sessions | Every participant meets with a clinician. This can include EMDR, a trauma therapy that relies less on talking through details. |
| Partners | Sessions on relationships and communication, with time for members and partners together. |
| After action plan | Each participant leaves with a written plan and a connection to follow-up care. |
Every applicant meets with a clinician before the seminar to confirm it is the right step at the right time. What is shared at the seminar stays within the seminar and is not used for investigative, disciplinary, evaluative, or supervisory purposes. The limits are the same as in the peer program: serious risk to self, serious risk to others, and any duty to report required by law.
What the research shows
Consistent results, from a small evidence base
Published research- Symptom reduction. Studies of law enforcement participants found significant decreases in PTSD, depression, and anxiety symptoms after the seminar (Lamphear, 2011; Sparn, 2015). In a Finnish pilot with 15 emergency service workers, average traumatic stress scores on the Impact of Event Scale, Revised (IES-R) fell from 30.9 before the seminar to 9.9 six months later (Korpela & Nordquist, 2023).
- Lasting skills. Six months after attending, participants described better self-regulation, a better ability to function at work, and more readiness to help colleagues (Korpela & Nordquist, 2024a, 2024b).
- Acceptability. Of 47 officers at a Texas seminar, 87.2% described EMDR as beneficial to their progress (Addo-Yobo et al., 2025).
- Families. Participants report less irritability and better communication at home, and recovery can be slower when partners do not attend (Evans, 2023; Lamphear, 2011).
- A cycle of support. The peer team at each seminar is drawn from past participants, so each seminar helps staff the next one (Lamphear, 2011).
These results come from internal program evaluations by the Warriors Rest Foundation. They have not been peer reviewed or published, and should be read as early program data, not established findings (Warriors Rest Foundation, 2026).
| Measure | February 2026 | March 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Participants (agencies represented) | 14 (10) | 13 (9) |
| Reduction in average IES-R score | 57% | 33% |
| Above the clinical cutoff before the seminar | 79% | 77% |
| Above the clinical cutoff after the seminar | 21% | 31% |
Clinical cutoff: IES-R score of 33 or higher. Participants were measured before and after the seminar.
The studies are small, several are dissertations or unpublished program evaluations, and none yet use a control group. The findings are consistent across countries and agencies, but they are early. Every OSRC seminar collects the same measures before, after, and at follow-up so the results can add to that evidence.
A regional approach
Running seminars together
The seminar can be run jointly with other first responder organizations in the area, including police, fire, paramedic, and communications services. Some members find it easier to attend a seminar that is not made up only of people from their own service. Ontario’s expert panel on police suicide recommended that services build mental health capacity on their own or in partnership with neighbouring services (Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario, 2019).
- Shared seminars. Places reserved for each participating service at a residential venue in the region.
- Shared team. OSRC clinicians and trained peers from participating services.
- Shared costs. Venue and clinical costs divided by the places each service uses.
- Separate control. Each service keeps control of its own referrals, and no member information is shared between services.
References
- Addo-Yobo, A., Uhl, A., Baloch, R. G., Stewart, T. K., Parrish, R., Johnson, R., Watkins, R., & Salami, T. (2025). Investigating the perceptions of EMDR among law enforcement officers attending a 3-day post critical incident seminar in Texas. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 40, 589–598. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-025-09743-9
- Evans, M. P. (2023). Impact of the completed South Carolina Post Critical Incident Seminar on the well-being of the law enforcement participants [Doctoral dissertation, Liberty University].
- Kentucky Department of Criminal Justice Training. (n.d.). Kentucky post-critical incident seminar.
- Korpela, S., & Nordquist, H. (2023). Depression, anxiety, and traumatic stress symptoms among emergency service workers in Finland after a post-critical incident seminar: A pilot study. Psych, 5(1), 53–59. https://doi.org/10.3390/psych5010006
- Korpela, S., & Nordquist, H. (2024a). Impacts of Post Critical Incident Seminar on emergency service personnel: The critical incident-related experiences and psychological state. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 65(2), 240–251. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12967
- Korpela, S., & Nordquist, H. (2024b). Supporting emergency service workers to cope with critical incidents that can lead to psychological burden at work: Developing skills in the Post Critical Incident Seminar. BMC Psychology, 12, 44. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-024-01534-x
- Lamphear, M. H. (2011). Effectiveness of the Post Critical Incident Seminar in reducing critical incident stress among law enforcement officers [Doctoral dissertation, Walden University]. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
- McNally, V. J., & Solomon, R. M. (1999). The FBI’s critical incident stress management program. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 68(2), 20–26.
- Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario. (2019). Staying visible, staying connected, for life: Report of the expert panel on police officer deaths by suicide. https://www.ontario.ca/document/staying-visible-staying-connected-life-report-expert-panel-police-officer-deaths-suicide
- Sparn, R. M. (2015). A program evaluation of the post critical incident seminar [Doctoral dissertation, Spalding University]. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
- Sumanen, H. (2020). Experiences and impacts of the post critical incident seminar among rescue and emergency medical service personnel (XAMK Research 15). South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences.
- Uhl, A., Addo-Yobo, A., Boland, G., Watkins, R., Senegal, J., & Salami, T. (2023). Mental health providers and peers help enhance the effectiveness of law enforcement mental health interventions. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 38, 774–781. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-023-09604-3
- Warriors Rest Foundation. (2026). PCIS impact reports, February and March 2026 [Unpublished program evaluation].
Program data from the Warriors Rest Foundation is an unpublished internal evaluation and is labelled as such wherever it appears.