WINNEMUCCA — Emergency first responders from throughout rural northern Nevada recently attended an intensive three-day training course on Critical Incident Stress Management, commonly known as “CISM”.  

The purpose of this three-day course was to prepare peer support personnel and mental health professionals to provide a variety of crisis intervention services for distressed individuals following traumatic events including job or family–related incidents, natural disaster, or terrorism. 

Some of the services that were taught were pre-incident education, defusing, the crisis management briefing, debriefings, and peer support, among others.   Also during this course, the participants took part in defusing scenarios and instruction on suicide prevention.

The CISM course was taught by Margaret Watson Hopkins, RN, who is a former University of California, Davis, Medical Center Life Flight Nurse.  Hopkins is the Administrative Coordinator of the NorCal CISM Regional Registry. 

Equipped with the tools learned through this course, participants will be able to organize into teams that will be available in the Northern Nevada region to provide peer support to other first responders who may be having a hard time dealing with particular situations.  Oftentimes, emergency first responders will have the need to discuss traumatic incidents to which they have responded and experienced first hand with others.

Nine deputies from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office attended the course as well as personnel from the Eureka County Sheriff’s Office; the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office; Elko S.O.; Douglas S.O.; Nevada Highway Patrol; Humboldt General Hospital EMS; Newmont Mine Security; Humboldt Hospice; Paradise Valley Fire Department; and Nevada Rural Mental Health Winnemucca Office.