Acute Stress Adaptive Protocol (ASAP) Training

This course will describe how first responders can take proactive and responsive steps to adaptively respond to chronic stress and trauma. A discussion of the risk and protective factors that influence wellbeing is offered to assist first responders to understand their own experiences with trauma and stress and how to mitigate their impact. This will include a plain-language discussion of the neurobiology of trauma. Resilience research is applied to the unique issues of first responder work, generating practical strategies to promote resilience. This discussion will be fortified with practical exercises that assess current levels of resilience and map a resilience-building plan. 

In this course, I discuss the complementary roles of proactive resilience building (peer support) and critical incident response (CISM). Attendees will learn how to use peer support to inoculate co-workers from the impacts of daily stressors and traumas, further inoculating them from future critical incident stress. To achieve this, they will learn how to identify the common and uncommon signs of mental health issues affecting co-workers and how to have helpful conversations to support them. They will also learn how to manage unique challenges in the supporter role such as confidentiality, suicidality, disciplinary investigations, and healthy boundaries. Role-play exercises will fortify learning, allowing for immediate feedback to improve interpersonal effectiveness. 

This course offers an explanation of secondary traumatic stress, how it differs from post-traumatic stress and burnout, and how it impacts first responders and their families. Proactive and reactive strategies are offered for individuals and organizations to mitigate the accumulation of stress resulting in secondary traumatic stress disorder (STSD). They also learn how to maintain a professional, compassionate approach to working with victims. The strategies and benefits of work-life balance will be offered.

This course offers families of first responders insights into the changes that occur over the

career of the first responder. Families are assisted in identifying these changes and

communicating them in a supportive manner to their first responder. They also learn to

build their own resilience, as they adapt to the givens of first responder work (danger,

shiftwork, public scrutiny). Lastly, families are equipped with resources to continue

building their resilience, which will, in turn, fortify the first responder’s resilience.

This program is designed to teach participants the fundamentals of, and a specific protocol for, individual crisis intervention.This course is designed for anyone who desires to increase their knowledge of individual (one-on-one) crisis intervention techniques in the fields of Business & Industry, Crisis Intervention, Disaster Response, Education, Emergency Services, Employee Assistance, Healthcare, Homeland Security, Mental Health, Military, Spiritual Care, and Traumatic Stress.

Designed to present the core elements of a comprehensive, systematic and multi-component crisis intervention curriculum, the Group Crisis Intervention course will prepare participants to understand a wide range of crisis intervention services. Fundamentals of Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) will be outlined and participants will leave with the knowledge and tools to provide several group crisis interventions, specifically demobilizations, defusings and the Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD). The need for appropriate follow-up services and referrals when necessary will also be discussed.

This course is designed for anyone in the fields of Business & Industry Crisis Intervention, Disaster Response, Education, Emergency Services, Employee Assistance, Healthcare, Homeland Security, Mental Health, Military, Spiritual Care, and Traumatic Stress.