When to stop and get help
The situations where the answer is a person, not a procedure
- RBT
- BCaBA
- BCBA
What the obligation is
Some situations are outside what any reference can answer: someone is in danger, a person is injured, a learner leaves toward traffic or water, a medical emergency, a disclosure or suspicion of abuse, a statement about wanting to die. In each, the right action is to get help from the people and systems that exist for it — emergency services, your site's crisis procedure, the learner's own plan, your supervisor — and then to document what happened. The technician outline includes implementing crisis and emergency procedures as a task precisely because those procedures are local: they come from your employer and the learner's plan, and they are what you follow. Knowing them before you need them is the actual preparation.
In plain language
If someone is in danger, get help first. Follow your workplace's crisis plan and the learner's plan. Then write down what happened and tell your supervisor the same day.
What this looks like
- Knowing your site's crisis procedure before your first session with a learner who has a history.
- Calling emergency services rather than working out whether it is serious enough.
- Completing the incident report before you leave for the day.
- Reporting any injury, to a client or to yourself, the same day however minor.
Where people get caught
- Trying to manage a crisis alone to avoid making a fuss.
- Treating a behaviour plan as if it overrode a medical one.
- Waiting for certainty before making a mandated report.
- Leaving the incident report until tomorrow, when the detail has gone.
If you are not sure
Escalate. The cost of an unnecessary call is small and recoverable; the cost of a delayed one is not. The urgent page in this app lists who to contact and what to record for each of these situations.
In the codes
- RBT Ethics Code (2.0) Section 2 — How you deliver services
- 2.01 Do no harm, and know your mandated-reporting duties
- 2.06 Send questions and concerns to your supervisor
- 2.07 Act when a client's rights or safety are at risk
- Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts Section 2 — Your conduct in practice
- 2.18 Keep evaluating whether the intervention is working
- 2.19 Address conditions that are blocking service delivery
- Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts Section 3 — What you owe clients and stakeholders
- 3.01 Act in the client's interest, and know your reporting duties
On the exam
Terms used here
Situations where this comes up
- A learner is hurting themselves and there is a risk of injury
- The learner runs off toward a road, a car park, or water
- The learner has hit, bitten or kicked someone and there is an injury
- The learner says they want to die or hurt themselves
- The learner has a seizure, stops breathing normally, or collapses
Related topics
Written from
- bacb-rbt-tco-3 — Task D.7
- abai-restraint-position-2010
Written from the RBT outline's crisis task and the professional consensus that crisis response is governed by local procedure, training and law.
This entry has not yet been through independent review. Treat it as a draft, and read the official code for anything that matters.