A tool to record the exposure to trauma experienced by police officers has been developed by the charity Police Care UK.
The Police Traumatic Events Checklist (PTEC) has been described by the charity as the world’s first such checklist. It has been developed in conjunction with the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) and the University of Cambridge.
Trauma exposure, Police Care UK has said, is an often-frequent part of everyday policing in the UK and has been for many years.
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It is recognised as posing a significant threat to wellbeing, as its impact can be dramatic and long-lasting on police officers and police staff, often leaving a legacy of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Despite this, there has previously never been a formal method of recording exposure to trauma, its frequency, or its severity.
This is where the PTEC tool comes in. It is a way of recording trauma incidents so as to help forces capture and measure the causes of stress and mental ill health and put mitigations in place before their impact becomes too significant, Police Care UK has argued.
The tool is voluntary and simply a means of recording trauma exposure and data, providing the ability to document what an individual is exposed to as part of their day job and, from there, record their resilience and any change over time.
This can support career development, decisions on promotion, on-the-job training, attitudes towards general wellbeing and counselling, and can provide an early warning on wider stress levels, Police Care UK has added.
PFEW worked with Dr Jess Miller, Police Care UK director of research, and the University of Cambridge, to code more than 1,500 of officers’ and staff’s worst reported incidents at work.
This fed into the development of a comprehensive checklist to describe and record experiences of everyday trauma.
An anonymous online trauma survey was also conducted. More than 18,000 staff and officers responded, with over 7,000 responding in detail.
The tool went through a series of trials from 2021 before being formally launched this autumn. It has been made freely available to all forces across the UK.
The tool is designed to be used by individual officers, supervisors, team leaders, occupational health practitioners, wellbeing leads, trauma risk management practitioners, federation or staff association representatives, counsellors and therapists, Police Care UK has said.
It can even potentially be used in force control rooms to monitor trauma exposure levels and manage risk, it has argued.
Police Care UK chief executive Gill Scott-Moore said: “Since we first highlighted trauma exposure as an issue in 2016, Police Care UK have continued to research and develop innovative initiatives to tackle trauma exposure and resilience in UK policing.”
There is a suite of documentation on the use of PTEC, what it is, how to use it in different roles, case studies PTEC tools.
Guidance on how to integrate the tool into existing force systems has also been created.
Sue Honeywill, wellbeing lead for the PFEW, added: “I am really pleased to see the launch of PTEC. Anything that tracks the exposure and trauma our officers face is a positive step forward.
“We know that officers routinely deal with difficult and traumatic incidents on a regular basis but by using PTEC , there will be opportunities to record frequency and to identify any negative impact on an officers’ mental wellbeing and ensure supportive preventative measures are put in place.
“We encourage all forces and chiefs to review what preventative measures they have in place and promote the use of PTEC as a supportive tool to track the ongoing exposure to trauma faced by our officers,” she said.
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