NC TACT

North Carolina Chapter
of the
Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International

NC TACT

Welcome to the

North Carolina
Telecommunicator APCO
Critical Incident Stress Management Team

“Taking Care of the Front-Line Through CISM”

Captain Dinah L. Jeffries, ENP
September 5, 2007

“We have found that firefighters listen to firefighters more than they will to mental health professionals or to clergy. You'll find that police officers listen to police officers, nurses listen to nurses, EMT's listen to EMT's, dispatchers listen to dispatchers, you could go on with a list like that. We have put a lot of emphasis into training peer support personnel who become members of Critical Incident Stress Management teams. They are one very important piece of the success of Critical Incident Stress Management.”

Jeff Mitchell (From a 1999 interview on “Trauma Response” with Joseph S. Volpe, Director of Professional Development)

This important process, CISM, or Critical Incident Stress Management, is an approach developed by Dr. Jeff Mitchell and Dr. George Everly as a response to crisis intervention. The two of them have created a program that applies crisis intervention principles to a group of emergency service professionals who have been, to some degree, neglected as recipients of these types of services, and to a larger degree, which has shown very little understanding or acknowledgement of the telecommunicator.

CISM is designed to:

1. Utilizes local trained resources appropriately in the appropriate way, and allows for the integration of outside resources if needed.

2. It is an amalgamation of many crisis intervention techniques that have been integrated in such a way that you use the best technique for the particular need at the particular time.

3. When people are trained in Critical Incident Stress Management, they go through a number of the courses so that they can work with individuals, large groups, small groups, families and mass disasters.

4. Helps individuals control their response to the crisis.

5. Helps stabilize the current situation and making sure the mission is complete for the individual in crisis.

Mitchell and Everly suggest that CISM is not a “substitute for psychotherapy, rather it is psychological first aid administered by peers.”

Consider for a moment the events that Telecommunicators are faced with daily. When an officer is shot, or a firefighter dies in a house fire, or an EMS crew member is killed in a car accident (all of which have occurred over the past year), field personnel are identified as the individuals needing crisis intervention because of their relation to the event, whether directly or indirectly involved. The event is seen as happening to “one of their own.” Telecommunicators are generally excluded because of their perceived “distance” from the event. It is often difficult for non-communication personnel to understand the devastating effect these events have on the people who work behind the scenes. Telecommunicators experience a series of emotions, ranging from guilt (what if they forgot to do something or what if they missed something) to grief because of the responsibility they are trained to take on for their field units. Alienating telecommunicators, and ignoring (and even dismissing by some agencies) their anxieties over some events can no doubt contribute to high turnover and burnout. I think Dr. Mitchell states it best: “There are many places that emphasize a high level of technical training, so they're doing really well on the technical aspects of the job, but where we've seen a lot of it fall down is the human element. People have not been skilled and trained in doing crisis intervention. They have not been skilled in stress awareness. They have not been skilled in stress prevention. So a large number of groups that I have seen over the years have not risen to the challenge. We congratulate those who have seen a challenge and have done something about it. We encourage those who have not trained or who are not providing education, to start moving in that direction because it is crucial to the survival of the personnel of the next century.”

Our Telecommunicators are the “front-line” of emergency response; therefore, the need for assuring they receive “psychological first-aid” is of utmost importance. Research clearly points to those who receive immediate assistance in a crisis return quicker to normalization. I do not believe it supportive or logical to deny telecommunicators the necessary assistance and tools that others in the emergency service field have recognized and are providing to their personnel. I think we owe our telecommunicators to take the initiative and start building a support frame that will assist them in effectively dealing with crisis. Dr. Mitchell says, “We need to be allied with one another and assist one another in making progress to do something to mitigate the impact of traumatic stress in people's lives.” Telecommunicators having been on the outside for so long have not developed a strong resource of allies. If this is a link that several others and I can provide as allies, then absolutely it must be provided and we will forge onward.

This is training that I truly believe in and support. I’ve witnessed and heard many telecommunicators across the State who often feel separated and left out when it comes to critical incident interventions. Sgt. Waddell constantly reminds us that “we must learn the process of taking care of our own if we expect to have healthy, functioning telecommunicators.” It is imperative for our present telecommunicators and those who plan to serve in the future, that they too be given every resource and tool to ensure that they will always have a well-established and trained support system in place.

On July 25, 2005, the NC Chapter of APCO kicked off the start of the first of several Critical Incident Stress Management Courses in which telecommunicators from across the State of North Carolina gathered to participate. This was the beginning of a vision to create a CISM Team for telecommunicators who have been left out of this very critical program on critical incident stress management. The NC Chapter of APCO has been instrumental in supporting and providing funding for several CISM: Individual Crisis Intervention courses.

On August 21, 2007, the NC APCO President, 1^st VP, and 2^nd VP all met with Captain Dinah Jeffries and Sgt. Waddell. The content of the meeting was to review the qualifications for team members, identify items to be included on the application process and create the interview panel for interested applicants. The procedures and guidelines are near completion and will be included in the interview process. The qualifications and application have been posted on the NC APCO website. The team, NC TACT (North Carolina Telecommunicators of APCO CISM Team), is a peer driven concept, which means that it belongs to the team members and NC APCO will remain as a sponsor for training and awareness venues.

The NC TACT Coordinator is Captain Dinah Jeffries and Sgt. A.W. Waddell from the NCSHP, has agreed to serve as a SME (Subject Matter Expert) and render his many years of experience and knowledge as an instructor and Team Leader for the NCSHP MAT (Members Assistance Team).

The interview board is composed of 2^nd VP Marsha Withthrow, NCSHP Sgt. A.W. Waddell, President Susan Waddell, and Captain Dinah Jeffries. All questions regarding the team can be directed to Captain Dinah Jeffries.

This site has welcomed