TIM Tool

The Intensive Care Society have worked with the intensive care units at Royal United Hospitals Bath and Cardiff and Vale University Health Board to produce the TIM: Team Immediate Meet.

The TIM is a communication tool and cognitive aid to be used after any clinical event that may cause distress. The intention of the tool is to enable staff to briefly check in with each other, have some useful short term self-care advice (Psychological First Aid - an approach advocated by the World Health Organisation), and have the option for supportive follow up after the acute stress response period.

The TIM supporting documents and training 

We have made it easy for you to establish our TIM programme in your unit and prepared all of the documents you need to launch which include:

  1. A standard operating procedure to help you launch the TIM in your intensive care unit 
  2. A downloadable TIM Tool -  This should be printed and displayed in a prominent area i.e., nursing station to help staff familiarise themselves with the Tool and to guide sessions*
  3. A TIM register - Designed to collate the names and emails of those involved, so that the team can look after each other and follow-up to make sure they are ok*

*Documents 2 and 3 should be used in conjunction with each other.

Below you will find training videos, a webinar on hot debriefing and simulations of the TIM in use across various scenarios. 

Registering your Unit

Registration to the TIM programme is free.

  1. Submit your unit details via the 'register here' button below
  2. Send your Hospital/Trust logo to communicationsteam@ics.ac.uk
  3. Receive your personalised digital TIM Tool pack including all of the documents mentioned above

If you have any questions about the Tool or how to use it, contact wellbeing@ics.ac.uk.

Brief TIM Tool Training Video

TIM Simulation Videos 

Below are a few simulations showing you how to use the TIM Tool in real life scenarios.

 

The TIM Tool in JICS

The team behind the TIM tool, Matthew Edmondson, Layla Guscoth, Julie Highfield, and Fiona Kelly, have also published an article in JICS, describing the tool and its reception. It's called Team Immediate Meet tool to help intensive care staff: Staff perception of an updated version and preliminary feedback following implementation, adn you can find it below.

The authors describe the TIM tool awareness campaign, quality improvement project and subsequent feedback from staff who reported that the tool would be useful for navigating the aftermath of potentially traumatic events and could be transferable to other ICUs.

Tea Trolley Training for the TIM Tool

‘Tea trolley training’ originated at the Royal United Hospital, Bath and is a novel method of providing multidisciplinary team training in the workplace. Short, succinct ‘bite-sized’ teaching sessions are brought to staff during their normal working day (or even night), with the subsequent reward of tea and cake!

Learn more about tea trolley training below.