Dear CISM Practitioner,

Disaster deployment requires effective stress management strategies to stay at your best. This article provides a few strategies that may be helpful to you as you deploy.

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Today's Helpful Hints
Within areas that have been affected by Hurricane Katrina, many first responders and other care providers are still on scene and effectively in the "Operations Mode."

At this time, as in most disasters, the priorities will be
1. Meet physiological needs for shelter, food, water, clothing
2. Meet basic needs for safety, security and medical care
3. Meet basic needs to re-establish family and other interpersonal connections, and
4. Timely/accurate information flow.

The suggested tool for "timely information flow" would be the Crisis Management Briefing (CMB). Please review this article for additional information about this component in the CISM toolbox.

Of the many tools that are available when providing Crisis Management services, Debriefings (per the ICISF Model) should be utilized rarely if at all at this stage of a disaster. The CISD should only be used with homogenous groups of people who worked on the disaster together. Their mission should be complete and they should have experienced approximately the same level of exposure. No personnel should be forced to participate. Should you wish to review the appropriateness of an ICISF Debriefing for a particular circumstance, please feel free to contact the ICISF office. Additional suggestions shall be forthcoming within the next several days.

 

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Announcing New Course
ICISF is pleased to announce a new curriculum being launched this Fall, entitled "Grief Following Trauma." Co-authors for this exciting and dynamic program are:

H. Norman Wright, LMFT, CTS, American Association of Christian Counselors Executive Board
Kevin L. Ellers, MDiv, Territorial Disaster Coordinator with the Salvation Army, and
Nancy E. Crump, MS, Director of the Trauma Support Network

Course Description:
In the course of nearly everyone's life, they will, at some time, encounter people grieving the loss of a loved one due to a traumatic event.

This new course is designed to help both professionals and lay people identify characteristics of trauma and traumatic events, the normalcy of traumatic grief reactions, learn good death notification and body identification techniques, become skilled at identifying warning signs of complications, and learn the importance of early interventions and support utilizing the SAFER-R model. Participants will increase their knowledge of how trauma impacts the grief process and will gain skills for evaluating and supporting persons who have experienced traumatic loss.

Course objectives are:

• Identify types of traumatic events and the characteristics of trauma and grief
• Describe normal responses to trauma and normal grief responses
• Describe factors that may complicate the traumatic grief process
• Learn practical and effective methods of death notification and preparation for body identification
• Identify the primary needs of people experiencing grief following trauma
• Outline techniques for supporting people grieving a trauma and for self-care

Additionally, some courses have already scheduled. Please refer to the Calendar of Conferences.

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Should anyone be interested in providing a donation to support disaster mental health services related to hurricane Katrina, they may review our Donations Link

If there are any inquiries about CISM Training opportunities,you may view the Calendar of Conferences

Finally, please remember that this will be a long term event, pace yourself. Remember to practice appropriate stress management principles to preserve your own well-being.

Further updates will follow as more information is obtained.

 

Donald Howell, Executive Director
International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, In.
Ellicott City MD 21042-2272
http://www.icisf.org
410/750-9600
Fax: 410/750-9601

KAT-05-03