Tag: PTSD

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A New Effort to Bring Care to First Responders in Need

1stAlliance seeks to ensure those who need care get they care they need

Article re-printed by CalibrePress.com with permission from the authorAdobeStock_102706188

By Karen Solomon

More than 240 million calls are placed to 911 each year in the United States alone: 240 million instances in which a first responder can be emotionally and/or physically injured. It happens more often than people realize. Once a first responder is traumatized by what he or she experiences, where do they turn to heal their wounds? Should they be burned in a fire or struck by a bullet or knife, what happens next? It’s a question they often ask themselves.

In my experience too many of injured and traumatized first responders will sit alone in front of a computer looking for someone to help them. They will seek someone who understands and won’t look upon them as if they are weak, who knows how to get them what they need without broadcasting it over the radio. It’s not an easy task. When they are in crisis, it becomes frustrating to the point that some will give up. Some will commit suicide.

Firefighters, peace officers, emergency medical technicians, corrections officers and dispatchers too often find themselves standing over an abyss of turmoil from which they can’t walk away. We’re going to change that. We’re going to find them the help they need. It’s a simple concept: A central database that doesn’t store any of their information and can point each and every one in the right direction.

What We’re Doing

Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Deputies Steven Hough and Jeffrey McGill know what it’s like to experience a critical incident and find themselves without the proper assistance to recover. They longed for a collaboration of the first responder resources scattered around their country, and a way to reach the people who need those resources. I joined them to form 1stAlliance, and from there a database was born.

Thanks to a collaboration with another injured officer, Bourne Massachusetts Officer Jared P. MacDonald, 1stAlliance is a 501(c)3 charitable organization whose sole mission is to provide a way for first responders to find their way out of the darkness.

On June 1 of this year 1stHelp.net will be launched: a free, confidential way for first responders to find emotional, financial and spiritual assistance. If they’re in immediate crisis, they’ll be provided with a 24/7 resource to call. If they’re not in immediate crisis, they’ll be able to enter some basic criteria and be matched with resources that match their needs. They can take their time selecting the best fit. But, most importantly, they’ll have a starting point.

This endeavor is not a short-term bandage. We have partnered with Avatar Computing and plan to develop this into a free, downloadable app over the next six months. Avatar has been incredibly generous and will be redesigning both sites, logos and assisting with the long-term development of the organization. We’re also collecting suicide statistics, and we have a five-year plan to provide baseline data that can tell us a story about what’s happening to our first responders.

We also want to hear about the PTSD experiences of first responders. Those stories help us understand where we should focus our efforts. Our goal is to find out what first responders need most, identify those resources, and present them in a simple, confidential manner. No judgement. No fear of reprisal.

Conclusion

It’s important to note that we aren’t competing with the established organizations. We are instead providing a vehicle for more people to find them. We have nearly 100 vetted resources in the United States, Canada, and Australia that are trained to assist first responders. What became a quiet national project is blossoming into a global endeavor. Through the chat forums that will be installed this summer, providers can collaborate best practices and ideas on a global scale, all with an eye to improving the quality of life of those that serve us.

If you’d like more information, please feel free to visit our website http://www.1alliance.org or contact me at karen@1alliance.org. This project has been funded to date through private donations and we continue to seek long-term corporate partners.

We are also providing free informational cards to any individual or department that would like to hand them out to their members. These cards bear our logo and the website and are a handy reminder that you are never alone. Simply visit our website and we’ll find you a safer outlook.

Do you provide services to first responders? Register for inclusion in the database here. If you’re a first responder, bookmark our site, share your PTSD story with us or let us know when someone completes suicide. Our success is your success.

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Dispatcher Appreciation Week

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Dispatchers

The Thin Gold Line

911

Between the Thin Red Line, the Thin Blue Line and the Thin White Line lies the Thin Gold Line. This narrowest of lines represents those who are rarely seen but always heard and appreciated. The calm voice in the dark, the heroes behind the scenes, the Golden Link that holds it all together:

DISPATCHERS

 

By Thonie Hevron

The week of April 10-16, 2016 is National Public Safety Telecommunicators Appreciation week, also known as Dispatcher Appreciation Week.  Dispatchers answer most of the incoming calls to public safety departments, assess and route the 911 calls, take appropriate action (some centers provide EMD-Emergency Medical Dispatch which means a dispatcher will direct the caller in first aid techniques to mitigate problems until the arrival of fire-fighters/paramedics) and relay important information to officers in the field. There is so much more they do: keep locations of patrol units in their heads as well as updated on the computer, provide confidential information when needed, recall bad guys’ dates of birth, listen for a tone in an officer’s voice to indicate trouble or need or whatever…

Telecommunicators Week began in California in 1981 and quickly grew to national recognition. Just ten years later, Congress designated the second full week of each April as a time to remember the critical role that dispatchers play in keeping us all safe.

Yesterday, the Sonoma County dispatchers celebrated twenty years of April Dispatcher Appreciation get-togethers. The venue was Sally Tomatoes in Rohnert Park and the event was well attended. My estimate was over one hundred dispatchers, retired and active-duty, as well as managers and department heads.

the usual suspectsHere is a mug shot of the usual suspects: Kathleen, Daralyn, Kathrina, and Jan are seated. I’m standing next to Natalie and Carli. Here are the faces of the women who calmed the mother of the dead baby down enough to get an address (not all calls are on landlines), who woke the fire-fighters up for the inferno next door, and the dispatcher who stayed on the phone with a young caller who heard an intruder in her home.

I’ve been through a lot with these women. There’s a bond that transcends distance and time. All but three are retired now. During the luncheon, someone brought up Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD). Natalie asked the table, “How many of you have trouble sleeping?” To a person, we all raised a hand. It was a little humbling to realize that we all have scars from the job. But we live with them and temper the ghosts with fun memories of camaraderie, blowing off steam, and the knowledge of a job well done. The general public will never see these things and that’s just fine by us. We know we did what we were supposed to do—trained to do.

If you don’t notice when you’re on the phone with us, that’s fine with us.

 

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Making Sure Help is on the Way

by The Badge of Life Canada

by Monique Tamminga – Langley Times
posted Jan 21, 2015 at 11:00 AM

Langley resident Rae-Lynne Dicks began her career as a 911 operator in 1995. She left the job after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and began studying at University of the Fraser Valley. She has conducted the first research in Canada on the prevalence of PTSD symptoms among Canadian 911 operators as part of her Master of Arts in criminal justice degree.

A former 911 operator who was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is hoping to help prevent other operators in Canada from going through the same experience.
Langley resident Rae-Lynne Dicks began her career as a 911 operator in 1995 and transitioned to B.C.’s biggest 911 call centre, E-Comm, in 1999.
911-center-4While most of us think of police as first responders, it is actually 911 operators who usually are the first to deal with emergency situations.
Dicks experienced hundreds of in-progress emergencies, including rapes, bridge jumpers, fire deaths, home invasions and domestic assaults.
“It is the helplessness of being on the phone, help is on the way, and there is nothing more you can do but listen to a person take their last breath full of smoke, hear them scream as they fall and then hit the water, hear the gunshot from the weapon pointed at their own head, hear the daddy beating mommy as you try to calm the child hiding in the closet and mommy stops screaming because she is unconscious,” writes Dicks in her capstone major paper about PTSD among Canadian 911 operators.
She has conducted the first research in Canada on the prevalence of PTSD symptoms among Canadian 911 operators as part of her Master of Arts in criminal justice degree at University of Fraser Valley.
Dicks sent survey questions to operators at six different organizations across Canada, including police, ambulance and fire that included a PTSD check list, requested information about how they cope and education, prevention and treatment provided by their employers.
Of the 146 operators who responded, 80.14 per cent reported experiencing at least one PTSD symptom, 30.8 per cent had a total symptom severity score of equal to or greater than 28, and 8.9 percent met all the symptom criteria for diagnosis of PTSD.
More than 88 per cent said they cope by making their situation better but 43 per cent said they use alcohol or drugs to cope. A shocking 19 per cent said they have given up on the attempt to cope.
The pool of operators surveyed should be bigger, she said, but her findings indicate that more support and more research is needed.
From her findings, Dicks is now hoping to work with 911 call centres around the country to assist organizations in developing and implementing peer support programs to ensure operators are receiving the support that they need after dealing with a major crisis. She has joined a group of professionals through the Mood Disorders Society of Canada to do just that.
“In almost all emergencies, once we are done with that call, we continue taking calls. For an officer, after an emergency call they do paper work and debrief. For 911 operators, they keep working. They can’t unplug,” she said.
And in a big call centre like E-Comm, an operator can take 40 to 120 calls a shift.
“It’s the constant exposure to trauma that is the difference,” she said. “A police officer will deal with up to 12 calls per shift.”
Plus, there is no closure for a 911 operator.
“We don’t get the satisfaction of arresting the bad guy or knowing what happens to the bad guys after we take the call,” she said.
She believes there should be protocol in place that allows an operator to say, “I’m traumatized. I need a break.”
That person would then be able to go off and talk with a person trained in debriefing after trauma.
But like other first responder cultures, there is stigmatization that everyone needs to be tough, and that leads to no one speaking up. The silence has led to suicides among 911 operators, she said.
Suicides among paramedics and police officers has been on the increase in Canada and highly publicized as of late.
Operators are also not allowed to talk to anyone close to them about what they dealt with at work, for fear that someone’s privacy would be compromised. This leaves them no one to talk with and reduces a circle of support. “It creates a disconnect,” Dicks said.
One of the key components of being a good 911 operator is the ability to make really important decisions quickly. When you have PTSD, decision making becomes difficult, she said.
For Dicks, the accumulation of traumatic incidents over many years created a downhill spiral that led to her diagnosis in 2002. She suffered night terrors in which her psyche replaced victims from calls she took with her family members.
Everyone’s experiences with PSTD is different. For Dicks, her diagnosis is considered chronic because it has lasted for more than one year.
Dicks thinks awareness and education amongst 911 operators and management is another key component to assisting operators see the early warning signs and seeking help to prevent it becoming full-blown PTSD.
Dicks is a volunteer at Badge of Life Canada, http://www.badgeoflifecanada.com. She recently spoke at the Justice Institute during the 2014 Heroes are Human tour for Tema Conter Memorial Trust.
She believes with the right education and support, PTSD can be mitigated among 911 operators.

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Oh What a Night! Part 2

Guest Post by Gerry Goldshine

May 24, 1986

Traffic collision 5/26/86 in Petaluma, CA involving Gerry Goldshine
Traffic collision 5/26/86 in Petaluma, CA involving Gerry Goldshine

Like a movie that was haphazardly pieced together, so went the few conscious periods that I can recall of what was undoubtedly the worst night of my life, Saturday, May 24, 1986.

I had been investigating traffic accidents since 1978 and I was usually the one trying to explain what happened. Finding myself immobilized on a back board, in a hospital emergency room without knowing how I got there was definitely a new experience. Those familiar sounding engine noises I had heard? One was the generator powering the halogen lights of the Fire Department’s rescue truck while the other was the Port-a-Power for the Jaws of Life. The periods of darkness, confusion and memory loss I was experiencing was the result of a serious concussion that I had sustained, among many other injuries. My short term memory was thrown into chaos. That I had just been in an accident was just not registering in my brain. In fact, I was having trouble remembering one moment from the next. Losing my memory was among one of the most frustrating aspects of this grand adventure into which I had been so unceremoniously thrust.

Street Survival

As I lay there on that backboard, a jumble of thoughts flooded my mind, nearly all of them unbidden. Coupled with the building pain  and the inability to recall events, I was feeling a supreme sense of confusion. While I can’t point to an exact moment of sudden clarity that triggered an epiphany, it was right around this time that I began to feel a sureness of thought. It is difficult to describe other than to say I knew that I was going to be okay and the more I focused on that thought the more certain of it I became.

Many weeks later, I had come to realize that without conscious effort I had adopted an attitude of survival in those crucial early moments of lucidity. I recalled some of the survival training I had received in the Army; the stories about how some soldiers would die from seemingly minor wounds because that is what they believed was going to be the outcome while others would survive grievous wounds due in large part to the belief that it was not their time to die.

I remembered more recent instruction I had received when I attended a “Street Survival” seminar for Police Officers. There, the instructors talked about developing a mental attitude of survival. Research was showing that, as with soldiers, those officers that had the expectation that they would survive any deadly encounter more often than not, did exactly that.  Despite serious wounds or injuries or seemingly overwhelming odds, many officers lived in large part because of the conviction they held as to the certainty of their survival. Conversely, we heard tales of officers giving up in physical encounters or when shot or seriously injured because that was their expectation.  I recalled someone at that seminar, perhaps it wasn’t even one of the instructors, going so far as to suggest that before every shift, as we looked into the mirror to check our appearance before going on patrol, as most of us invariably do, we take the time to remind ourselves that no matter what may befall us, we will persevere and survive. How one cultivates this can vary greatly; from religious tenets to personal convictions to something akin to the “Vulcan” logic of Star Trek. 

Since attending that seminar I had been practicing my own version, every day before briefing. As I lay there trying to cope with the worst pain I had ever experienced, confused about what actually happened to me, I knew with a profound certainty that I would be okay. It didn’t take away the pain, both physical and mental; I faced months of healing and additional surgeries. Still, I knew that through whatever travails I encountered as a result of this collision, I would come out just fine.

Physical Conditioning for Survival

However, the mind alone cannot bring a person through such an encounter; the body must be equally prepared and conditioned. In the military, physical conditioning is a daily part of life. The more hazardous the mission, the more grueling the physical preparation for it. As a parachute trained Infantry Officer, I had to undergo some of the more rigorous physical conditioning in the Army and was tested regularly to ensure I was meeting physical fitness standards. Long distance running, calisthenics and strength conditioning were second nature by the time I left the military for civilian law enforcement. If possible, though not at the same level of intensity as I had done in the Army, I still maintained a daily physical fitness routine. My doctors later told me that my physical conditioning played a significant role in mitigating my injuries and in aiding my recovery.

Aftermath

Once you have made it through and survived a critical incident, as it is euphemistically called, what then? Dealing with the physical aftermath is a pretty straight forward, often arduous and occasionally painful process.  Less known back then were what skillsets were needed to cope with the psychological trauma from not only the accident itself, but from the numerous surgeries, as well as grueling and very painful physical therapy. There are anxieties about family; have I worried them too much, have I let them down, how are they coping? There is a sense of isolation from your peers, which often grows in proportion to the time you are away from the job. The treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was essentially in its infancy back then. Much of what was known came from the study of Viet Nam veterans and as is frequently the case when it comes to the mind, the so-called experts didn’t always get it right often operating from false assumptions. Unfortunately, it would take three more wars to hone the treatment of PTSD. However, the subject of PTSD and how I coped is another story for perhaps another time.

Soldiers will often say that they are fighting less for any particular cause than they are for their companions alongside them. Truth be told though, when considering the mortal danger they have to face, the thought that keeps them from being paralyzed with fear is that it will be someone else, one of those same companions, that will get hit and not themselves. Police officers face a more personal, one-on-one type of threat. The good ones, the survivors, are nearly always taking time to imagine and plan reactions to those threats should they ever happen. Doing so builds confidence in their ability to persevere and ultimately overcome a critical incident.

Survival Strategy

I used to be asked by nearly every civilian ride-a-long I took out, “Aren’t you afraid of getting shot?” My response had always been, “Not really. I’m more afraid of some drunk driver at 2:30 in the morning, crossing the center line and hitting my car head-on.” Though the driver that hit me hadn’t been drinking, I really wasn’t surprised about having been in a head-on collision because I had seriously considered such a scenario. In a sense, that was part of my survival strategy. As is the case with critical encounters, I was not the only one affected by it and my story crosses paths with those of many other people. In respecting their privacy, those tales are theirs to tell or keep to themselves.

Twenty-six years later, I am still astonished to come into contact with someone who was somehow involved, in one way or another, in the events of that night. Their accounts are often poignant and heartwarming. Seldom considered is how the aftermath of an incident such as this ripples out like the surface of a pond after a stone drops into it, enveloping many more than just the principal people. As Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons sang in back 1976, “Oh, what a night”.

Indeed it was.                                                        

                                    

Traffic Officer Gerry Goldshine circa 1985
Traffic Officer Gerry Goldshine circa 1985

  

Gerry was born in Providence, Rhode Island but raised in Southern California. 

Upon graduating from California State University, Los Angeles, Gerry enlisted in

the Army and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. After leaving active duty

in 1979, he worked for Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office. From 1980 until his retirement

in 1996, he was a patrol officer, traffic officer, and a trainer at Petaluma Police Department.

Gerry is married, has a daughter and lives in Sonoma County, California.