The Psychotrauma Unit of United Hatzalah, which provides stabilization care for people who have undergone a traumatic experience or who were at the scene of a traumatic experience, is setting the stage to incorporate between 150 to 175 new psychological caregivers in the coming year.

Having opened a new course last week, 30 additional psychologists and social workers will be joining the Unit upon graduation. The leadership of the Unit, headed by Director Miriam Ballin, and team leaders Rickie Rabinowitz, and Avi Steinhartz, is gearing up to increase the total number of caregivers by a factor of 5 in the next twelve months.

“What once started out as a dream, has now become the cutting edge of emergency psychological response,” said Raphael Poch, the International Spokesperson of United Hatzalah. “Last night, 8 members of the Unit provided on-scene treatment at the house fire in Jerusalem, which claimed the lives of a mother and her four children. http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/505978/the-family-from-the-jerusalem-fire-moved-to-israel-from-france-.html Volunteer responders, all of whom are trained psychologists or social workers, provided psychological stabilization for the father of the children, as well as both sets of grandparents, concerned and traumatized neighbors, and friends of the family. Our team was on scene for hours after the emergency medical and fire and rescue teams had departed. When the social workers of the city of Jerusalem arrived sometime after the event, our team was still on site and working with those affected by the tragic event.”

Also responding to the incident last night was Dr. Gary Quinn, a Psychiatrist and the Director of the Jerusalem EMDR Institute, and one of the founders and instructors of the Psychotrauma Unit. Dr. Quinn specializes in Crisis Intervention, the treatment of Anxiety and Depressive Disorders, and the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Upon Dr. Quinn’s arrival, responders as well as city social workers deferred to his expertise and proceeded to work together to provide as much relief and stabilization as they could for those who needed it.

Following the incident, the psychotrauma team also provided emotional and psychological debriefs for the EMTs, paramedics, and doctors who responded to the call and had to pronounce the death of the mother and her children. “We arrange for proper debriefs for all first responders after traumatic calls like this one,” said Ballin.

United Hatzalah’s Psychotrauma Unit was officially inaugurated at the end of May 2016, and it has become one of the innovative units in emergency medicine.

In addition to the brand new course, the Psychotrauma Unit will be opening a course for 100 EMTs who are already active within the organization. By undertaking a specialized psychotrauma enrichment course, these EMTs will be allowed to operate under the auspices of the unit when they treat patients at traumatic scenes. These EMTs and professionals will join the already existing unit of some 30 volunteers in providing psychological stabilization and treatment in the field at any scene that requires their presence, which can include incidents of crib death, suicide, the sudden death of a family member, severe car accidents and even terror attacks. “People need help in coping with the trauma of especially stressful situations,” said Ballin, “that is where we come in. We help the people on-site and we stabilize them so that they can deal with the situation on hand all while receiving support by specially trained psychological caregivers.”

In addition to initiating the project and creating an educational curriculum for future volunteers, Ballin recently submitted a list of official protocols in compliance with their mandates to Israel’s Health Ministry in order to have the Unit officially recognized as Emergency Psychological Services (EPS), which will operate in tandem with EMS agencies already in place in Israel.

“We work hand-in-hand with the emergency services that arrive at the scene,” Ballin explained. “Police, Fire and Rescue services, and EMS services all look to us to handle people on scene that go into psychological shock, as well as bystanders who have difficulty dealing with the trauma at hand. We have been called many times to a variety of scenes including large scale terror attacks and teenage suicides. Our main challenge now is being able to send volunteers to cities that are far away from our main area of operations, which is Jerusalem and the central region of Israel.”

To deal with that challenge, the organization opened a new course that caters to psychologists from around the country. “We have people from all over, some even from as far north as Safed come to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv to take the course,” Ballin said. Between the new course graduates and the 100 EMTs, the Unit hopes to expand to 175 caregivers in the next calendar year from its current total of 30.

“We want to make a big impact and treat as many people as we can, no matter how far away they are. So, we are training local people in their area,” added Ballin, who works as a family therapist and has stopped accepting new clients so that she could dedicate more time to the development of the Unit.

Another challenge that the unit faces is the re-education of the psychologists and social workers to avoid their regular “professional practices” of finding a long-term solution to problems in favor of an immediate “here-and-now” treatment. Ballin feels confident that this adjustment will happen during the course. “We are moving our professional practitioners away from the long-term approach and engaging them to use their experience to make quick decisions regarding the proper stabilization of psychological trauma patients in a heartbeat. A perfect example of this is the use of comforting touches. In the professional sphere, practitioners are not allowed to touch their clients. In the emergency sphere, however, this possibility needs to be explored under the correct procedures and circumstances in order to both ground and comfort the patient, as words often are not enough to stabilize someone who has just experienced a high-stress or severely traumatic incident.”

Having responded to dozens of calls per month, Ballin hopes to use that experience to better educate and prepare the next wave of volunteers in the unit. “We have a wealth of new knowledge that comes from hands-on experience. One of the things that we are looking to do is to create a two-tiered system of care, similar to what exists in the EMS world with advanced lifesaving (ALS), provided by doctors and paramedics, whereas basic lifesaving procedures (BLS) are provided by EMTs. The new additions to the Psychotrauma Unit will enable the unit to work using the same model. EMTs who are undergoing the training will be providing the lower tier of treatment, the psychological BLS, while the professional practitioners who are undertaking the full training course will be providing the psychological ALS.”

Ballin explained that one of the differences between the two levels will be the ability to conduct a mass debrief for first responders who have returned from treating patients at a particularly traumatic medical incident, such as the one that occurred last night. That type of debriefing will be conducted by the Psychotrauma ALS team. Ballin said that it is important to have an “in-house” address for any first responder to turn to following a traumatic call. “It is something that we have built up within our own organization, and it is open to any first responder from other organizations as well should they feel the need for immediate help following a traumatic call.” Ballin also said that the Unit has put a strong emphasis on the idea of self-care for the volunteers who participate in the Unit.

“There is a lot of hard work ahead of us to really build this unit the way it should be built, but neither the leadership nor the volunteers in our unit have ever shied away from that before. That is, after all, what brings us here. The need to help people despite the difficult and daunting circumstances,” Ballin concluded.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo Credit: United Hatzalah)