Online training for professionals working with First Responders.
Course Goal : Equip helping professionals with the knowledge, skills, and strategies necessary to effectively support and treat first responders in addressing mental health challenges, fostering resilience, and enhancing overall well-being within this unique population.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course is designed for helping professionals seeking to enhance their skill set, knowledge and efficacy in working with first responders, including dispatchers, emergency services technicians, paramedics, firefighters, and police officers. This course delves into the unique challenges faced by first responders and equips participants with practical strategies to address these challenges effectively while promoting resiliency. Through a combination of video lessons, case studies, reflective prompts, and knowledge assessments, participants will gain insights into the psychological, emotional, and relational dynamics unique to first responders. One of the highlights of this course is the introduction of the PEACE Resilience Model as a preventative strategy for clients that will experience ongoing traumatic exposure.
This course is ideal for mental health professionals, counselors, therapists, psychologists, marriage and family therapists, social workers, and other helping professionals who are committed to providing competent and compassionate care to first responders. By the end of the training, participants will be equipped with the knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to make a positive impact in the lives of first responders and their support systems.
Learn more about the course and what to expect in each module with this video
Module 1: Foundations of Treatment with First Responders
Module 1 explores the various roles, stressors, and cultural characteristics of first responders. This module distinguishes common presenting problems and characteristics presented in professional helping scenarios. A review is provided on organizational culture, stigma around mental health, and barriers to seeking help.
Module 2: Treatment Approaches and Considerations
Module 2 distinguishes the unique challenges with confidentiality and ethical boundaries. This module describes practical strategies for therapeutic sessions that prioritize humanistic elements and effective communication. This module evaluates indirect effects of trauma on the helping professional and critiques methods of provider wellbeing.
Module 3: Utilizing PEACE Resilience Model
Module 3 outlines the PEACE Resilience Model to utilize with clients that experience ongoing exposure to trauma situations. This model builds resiliency in first responders through psychoeducation on trauma, expanding awareness, activating healthy habits, coping with acute stress, and establishing a resilience plan.
Module 4: Strengthening Families and Supports
Module 4 identifies the impact of the first responder role on social support, such as intimate relationships and families. This module describes challenges that first responder partners often experience and interventions for treatment as well as stress management techniques.
Course Objectives:
Participants will be able to:
- Identify unique characteristics of first responder clientele and how it impacts the therapeutic process.
- Diagnose common presenting problems for clinical focus of first responders in treatment.
- Develop effective treatment interventions for addressing common issues with first responders.
- Explain the importance of early intervention with populations that experience higher trauma exposure.
- Assess readiness for treating a first responder client by utilizing the Treatment Preparedness Self-Assessment.
- Develop skills in Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) and Psychological First Aid (PFA).
- Recognize key principles of trauma-based neuroscience for psychoeducation and treatment intervention selection.
- Describe the challenges in establishing therapeutic relationships and groundwork with trauma clients.
- Evaluate the use of trauma treatment frameworks, specifically the tri-phasic model, for trauma counseling.
- Analyze trauma treatment models in counseling.
- Apply the counseling technique of scaling to trauma informed competencies, such as gradual desensitization.
- Create effective strategies for maintaining professional and personal wellness in response to indirect effects of trauma.
- Appraise the importance of pairing resilience strategies with trauma-informed counseling for clients that experience ongoing exposure to trauma situations.
- Utilize the PEACE Resilience model with clients that experience ongoing trauma.
- Demonstrate awareness of challenges and impact of first responder careers on their families and supports.
- Recognize treatment intervention and techniques for partners of first responders.
COURSE INSTRUCTIONS
DATE: Register at any time
DELIVERY METHOD: 4 Modules, Self-paced Online
PREREQUISITES: None
CE HOURS: 13
All course material is provided.
INSTRUCTORS: Dr. Sarah Stewart-Spencer, Dr. Allison Kanter Agliata
COMPLETION DOCUMENT: After successfully finishing the course, you will receive a completion document indicating CE hours earned.
- This course is 13 CEU hours based on NBCC standards.
- This course is a required component of the First Responder Provider Certification program under the International Trauma Training Institute.
- You can log on at any time, for as much time as you want.
- The course is built around 4 modules. Each module includes video and text articles.
- At the end of the course , there is an assessment quiz which must be completed successfully – a score of 80% or higher is required to pass.
- Participants must complete the modules in the order they are presented. A completion documentation will be provided after successful completion of the course.
NBCC: ITTI is an approved National Board for Certified Counselors continuing education provider. ACEP # 6674
