ESTSS - Workshop deel Hans

1
Guidelines for psychosocial support for uniformed
service organizations (USO)
_Hans te Brake, PhD12th European Conference on
Traumatic Stress Vienna2-5 June 2011
2
A standard for the best psychosocial care for USO
personnel

• to prevent differences in psychosocial care
  between organizations
• to prevent differences in psychosocial care
  within organizations

3
Commitment from relevant organizations

• Ambulance
• Fire brigade
• Police
• Ministry of defence
• Royal Dutch Water Life Saving Association
• GPs
• Psychologists
• Psychiatrists
• Netherlands Society of Occupational Medicine
• In addition the Dutch Red Cross, social
  counselors, Dutch Victim Care, Veteran care, The
  Netherlands Press Council, Association of
  Netherlands Municipalities

4
Guideline development

• Specific methodology
• Systematic literature research
• Best-practices
• Consensus among experts
• Authorisation (commitment)
• Project- and steering group
• Focus groups (multidisciplinary)
• Test of practicality (mono disciplinary)

evidence based
5
Resilience as a vantage point

• Most people are able to recover after
  experiencing a shocking incident, people are
  resilient.
• Centralized are the uniformed servicemen and
  their ability to bounce back
• However, for this to happen a supportive context
  is needed, promoting the use of peoples
  resilience
• Provide practical help and information
• Show empathy
• A timely detection of psychopathology and proper
  referral to professional help is essential

6
Stepped care model

• (based on Gersons, 2005)
• Applicable to all uniformed service organizations
  
• Leaves room for interpretation and
  context-specific implementation

7
Peer support

• Translation of the supportive context within
  the USO
• People working in an USO often prefer (direct)
  colleagues for talking about work-related
  (shocking) incidents colleagues are accessible,
  and can provide a low-threshold access
• Peer support is already common practice (albeit
  in very diverse ways!)
• Colleagues (and their supervisors) play an
  important role in the timely identification of
  those in need for professional psychosocial care

8
Peer support 4 steps

• 55 recommendations
• Uniformed servicemen, peer supporters, team
  leaders, management

9
Discussion

• Key accomplishments of guidelines for USO
• multidisciplinary agreement on
• and organisation-wide adherence to
• specific recommendations
• regarding the best possible psychosocial support
• for uniformed services.

10
Thank you for your attention.
Hans te BrakeH.tebrake_at_amc.uva.nl04.06.2011