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POWELL, Wyoming —Managing stress for those who serve in critical response roles is no longer limited to emergency personnel. School, college, government and business employees, to name a few, are increasingly called on to respond to difficult incidents. Unmanaged stress created by those situations can lead to numerous issues for individuals and organizations. To address this problem, the Northwest College Center for Training and Development is offering a two-day training in Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM): Large and Small Group Intervention.
Taught by Theo Riley and Linda Waggoner, the course meets from 8 a.m.- 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 5 and 6, in the Yellowstone Building Conference Center on the NWC campus.
Riley, a licensed psychologist, is the Park County Critical Incident Stress Management Team clinical director. Waggoner serves as team coordinator for the same team, focusing on peer support.
They’ll discuss the impact to individuals and teams when responding to incidents involving violence, natural disasters and other serious incidents. After identifying consequences and symptoms, they’ll explore the CISM model for stress management that has a proven efficacy and is considered the standard of care in the field of mitigation, education and intervention of critical incident stress.
According to Riley, administrators who support this education have found that emergency response personnel develop a greater resiliency and recover more quickly following a difficult incident.
Topics covered in the training include personality characteristics, stress reactions/symptoms, coping skills, resistance, resiliency and recovery, group process and team development.
In addition to educating emergency responders, the course is intended to prepare peer support individuals and mental health professionals for roles in managing critical incident stress.
Cost for this two-day training is $50 per individual and includes all materials, lunches and snacks.
For more information about the program, contact Waggoner at 307-899-1581 or lwaggoner@bresnan.net.
To register, go to http://www.nwc.edu/ctd, email PowellCTD@nwc.edu, or call 307-754-6061.