What
does a CISM Team do?
What is Critical Incident Stress (CIS)?
What is the goal of Critical Incident Stress Management?
Position
on Other "Like" Organizations
What
does a CISM Team do?
The Montgomery County CISM Team
provides the following services:
1.
Pre-incident Education
2.
On-scene disaster support
3.
Disaster Demobilization and Post-incident Education
4.
Crisis Management Briefing
5.
Limited scope Defusing
6.
Formal Debriefing
7.
Family Support Services
8. Assessment and Consultation Services
9.
Resource and Referral Network
10.
Mutual Aid with other teams
Click here to go to
the "Services" page
In our long established team (since
1986), education and defusings are the mainstays of activity.
Other facets occur less frequently but are of no less importance.
A team member may choose to concentrate in one area and still be
available for others. The
Montgomery County CISM Team has assisted with: mass casualty events, disasters,
plane crashes, line-of-duty-deaths, serious injuries, pediatric deaths, and many
other cases of no less importance. All
team members are required to attend the Basic CISM "Group Crisis
Intervention" 16-hour training in
order to participate in interventions. Additional important courses
include Individual Crisis Intervention and Peer Support.
What
is Critical Incident Stress (CIS)?
Any event that has the ability to
trigger strong emotional reactions in an emergency worker that brings about a
change in function is a Critical Incident.
We emphasize that the emergency service provider is normal with normal
reactions. Only the event is
abnormal. Some events can
predictably cause CIS such as a line-of-duty-death, life threatening experience
or a disaster. Even so, some events
don’t bother everyone. Likewise,
seemingly innocuous events can cause strong cascades of reactions and emotions.
Similar reactions can occur in groups of ordinary
citizens. Called CIS or Acute
Traumatic Stress, these reactions can also change the functioning of individuals
and can cause great distress. International
and national events have clearly highlighted how these reactions affect people.
What
is the goal of Critical Incident Stress Management?
The many members of the emergency services already
sacrifice much to serve their fellow citizens.
The training is long and can be grueling.
Response to emergencies or employment in the field takes time away from
family and friends (or primary occupations).
There is significant expense to self, or society, in the cost of training
these individuals. The emergency
workers are many times exposed to things that the average civilian/layperson may
only see on the big screen or in their nightmares.
There is also considerable personal risk of injury or death.
It takes a different type of person to be involved in this work. An end
result of psychological traumatic exposures can be certain mental disorders
principle of which is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This disorder can render individuals less effective in their
roles, or in the worse case scenario, cause their leaving the emergency work.
Less effective providers can put their co-workers or charges at risk.
After having sacrificed and risked so much already,
being emotionally scarred by their service is unfair to themselves, and their
families, when it frequently can be avoided by interventions such as CISM.
Loss of emergency workers, and especially those that volunteer, is a loss
of experience and training expense to society.
The emergency worker has a different psychological make-up than the
average citizen. This requires a
different approach. This is where
CISM comes in. In short, the CISM
process lets the emergency worker know that there are people who care about them
and helps ensure the emergency worker’s availability for future emergency
needs in our society.
When it comes to the community at whole, bad events can
cause great distress. We cannot
change that. However, we can
address the issues that cause increased distress.
This includes validation and normalization of feelings and reactions,
dissemination of timely and appropriate information about the event, and
ensuring that other organizations are addressing basic needs.
When these basic issues are not addressed, it is natural for people to
over react. When this happens,
disorder can occur which increases the drain and strain on already stretched
emergency and municipal services that are trying to deal with the primary event.
Position
on Other "Like" Organizations
The Montgomery County CISM Team recognizes that there
are other community-based organizations that already provide a similar group
crisis response. It is the
intention of the CISM team to partner or network with these preexisting
organizations to provide the most appropriate response by the most appropriate
resource. Examples of these other
organizations include (but are not limited to): The American Red Cross, Norristown Borough TRUST,
Abington/Jenkintown/Upper Moreland SPIRIT, Western county chaplains group, etc.
