International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, Inc.
International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, Inc.
By: Roy Cox D.ED Paramedic and Operations Director Pittsburgh CISM
How do you respond to a request to defuse a group of responders who need CISM interventions after they had a bad call? In this era of lockdowns, closures, and regulations limiting gatherings of people it creates a new dilemma for CISM teams responding to perform a defusing or debriefing of public safety personnel. Our team averages 6-8 calls in a month for a 200 square mile jurisdiction.
The first week of April we received a team response request for a motor vehicle crash with fatalities that involved members the crew knew. As we know this makes the call more complicated and the aftermath mentally more complex. The Fire Chief, EMS crew, and police were all affected by this incident. So, the dilemma surfaces on how does a local CISM team respond to this request? Helping the helpers while following the national, state, and local guidelines of not congregating in groups and limiting exposure of all involved is the challenge facing CISM teams across the world.
Our team leadership performed a conference call and the team board members met via SKYPE to determine our best plan of action to assist with this request for a defusing. Our clinical directors and operational director offered suggestions to still follow the guidelines set forth by government leaders while offering various options to the responders of this unfortunate situation. Our conclusion was to offer the chief the following:
These options were presented to the chief who was the initial caller. It was met with some question on why we would not respond in person. At this time of the pandemic it was still early, and many citizens and public safety personnel had not been as proactive as you would of thought. In addition, the overall awareness of the pandemic size and magnitude was advancing slowly due to the fact of limited test kits and low numbers of positive individuals being reported. However, within a matter of a week the situation exploded, and the incident was making its impact throughout the region, state, nation, and world.
Our CISM RESPONSE PROTOCOL is:
When replying to a CISM call for a CISM Response, Pittsburgh CISM hotline staff will continue to accept CISM calls. The on-call CISM supervisor will call back the requesting agency or person and arrange to work with the requesting agency to initiate a CISM response via either phone call or video conferencing upon an agreeable date and time. The Allegheny County/Pittsburgh CISM hotline number is: 412-647-2473
Key Protocol Points:
Meetings: All scheduled face to face steering committee and team meetings will be postponed until “social distancing” guidelines are no longer in effect. CISM committee members will be notified via e-mail of phone conferences which will be held as needed. Pandemic response updates and information will be emailed to team members using Pittsburgh CISM Gmail account as issues or operational approaches change.
Our goal as a CISM team is to protect our CISM volunteer staff, the First Responders requesting our interventions and the citizens within our jurisdiction. As this event continues to evolve, we will adjust and adapt to meet the needs of all involved. We also have reached out to ICISF prior to initiating our protocol of obtain guidance and acknowledgement that our protocol would be acceptable to follow the Mitchell Model of CISM interventions. It was acknowledged and permitted. We are in different time today and there is no indication on how long this incident will last. It is our hope that within the next 6 months we should be able to return to a CISM response as usual.
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International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, Inc is a 501(c)3 Non Profit