Community Response Training

June 18, 2024  |  8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Working with peers and colleagues during critical events becomes challenging in the middle of chaos and overwhelming distress. All the trigger points seem to be over and beyond what seems manageable - stress is high, emotions are volatile, fatigue is constant, and tasks seem unending. Even in the most peaceful circumstances, people have differences. Differences often lead to conflicts and conflicts could lead to a high cost of emotional and physical exhaustion, wasted time with no solutions, or even loss of mission focus and financial support. Could conflicts also be positive? Recognizing and dealing with difficult personalities in conflict is challenging, and knowing how to deal with nitpickers, complainers, antagonist, and “crank pots” may require strategic engagement, effective confrontation (your speech), asking the right questions, and establishing reasonable boundaries. Confrontation is caring enough to stay in an uncomfortable relationship to encourage mutual respect for feelings, needs, values, and desires. Clarifying motives; knowing the difference between issues, persons, and behaviors; and choosing the right time and context may be some of the most valuable components of being able to confront effectively. When conflict is managed well and confrontation is accomplished with the right motives and style, conflict resolution becomes more possible.
What you will learn:

• What is conflict and why does it occur?
• How to deal with difficult people in conflicts
• How to deal with angry peers and colleagues
• How to engage effective conversations during conflict
• What confrontation is and is not
• Effective confrontation skills and tactics
• Ways to respond to conflict in your peer or colleague setting

Completion qualifies for 7 contact hours.

June 19, 2024  |  8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Why don’t we learn more about suicide – because the thought that we might have to intervene scares us to death! What we know about suicide is, it’s overwhelmingly sad and painful for the surviving friends and families. Everyone should have a foundational awareness of the risks and warning signs of suicide. We want to effectively intervene with suicidal individuals long before they attempt the act of suicide. This course is recommended for those without formal mental health training. The course is designed to increase awareness of suicide and equip participants with information and basic skills to support persons who have high risk for suicide and to immediately recognize the warning signs that a person is considering suicide.  Discussions, demonstrations, and scenarios will be used to facilitate learning. This is a foundational level course.
What you will learn:

• Overview of suicide
• Recognizing suicide risk factors
• Recognizing the warning signs of suicide
• Encouraging preventative and protective factor to prevent suicide
• Strategies for responding to those considering suicide
• Crisis intervention and suicide prevention
• Referral skills and resources

Completion qualifies for 7 contact hours.

June 20, 2024  |  8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Emergency responders and healthcare professionals face extraordinary stressors in the crisis environment daily. Factor in staffing shortages, corporate financial constraints, long work hours, unrealistic rotations and shifts, dying clients and patients, and increasingly complicated situations, the constant technological challenges seem overwhelming at best. Now add in the personal stressors of family, finances, time away from home, the need for continuing education, fragile interpersonal relationships, and crisis becomes an ongoing event with little relief in sight. During this age of uncertainty – especially during pandemic, all these stressors seem to have been exacerbated and recognizing stress and its manifestations seems irrelevant. Critical incidents, adverse events, operational and medical errors, near misses, disclosure, reporting, and moral injury and second victimization seem to be expected even when unwanted. It’s important to know that these do not exist in isolation – they are on a continuum of crisis. Is there a balm in Gilead for responders – emergency and healthcare personnel? Talking about stress and manifestations of stress will be inadequate for resilience and fitness. Awareness, stabilization, mitigation, and restoration in new ways will be necessary.
What you will learn:

• Unseen dangers and typical unidentified causes, reactions, and problems
• Four causes of stress injury
• Differences in burnout, empathy fatigue, compassion fatigue, moral injury, second victim syndrome
• How inner conflict, moral conflict, moral injury, Second Victim Syndrome and PTSD are related – or not
• How to live courageously in a post COVID world

Completion qualifies for 7 contact hours.

June 21, 2024  |  8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Intentional Listening and Compassionate Responding
Even in the best of circumstances, communication is difficult. Understanding what people mean and responding so people understand is a constant challenge in “good communication.” Effective communication during critical moments requires skills in mitigating stress, building rapport, and compassionate responses. Listening to facts is much easier than listening to the emotions of a person during crisis. Responding to a cognitive question is much easier than responding to “Why?” During critical moments, impacted people need listeners who know how to apply the principles of psychological first aid and still respond compassionately. Care providers must know how to respond to impacted folks who are afraid, who are grieving, and even those who are difficult – challenging to listen to in the crisis moment. Care providers may encounter people who feel desperate or hopeless. Compassionate communication includes knowing what to say if someone is suicidal. This training course will help you know what you must intentionally do to become a better, effective communicator during a critical situation when a person has been impacted by the event and is aroused – in distress. In crisis intervention, active listening is essential. However, appropriate responding is also necessary in the communication process. It requires both listening and responding in such a way that the impacted speaker feels compassionately heard and understood. In other words, the responder must learn to “listen with your heart.”
What you will learn:

• How communication is impacted by crisis reactions
• What communication needs exist during crisis
• How people communicate when distressed
• Principles of active listening
• Ethics of listening
• Principles of compassionate responses
•  How to communicate with people who are fearful
• How to communicate with people who are grieving
• How to communicate with people who are difficult
• What to say if someone is suicidal

Completion qualifies for 7 contact hours.