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Guidelines for psychosocial support for uniformed service organizations (USO). _ Hans te Brake, PhD 12th European Conference on Traumatic Stress Vienna 2-5 June 2011. A standard for the best psychosocial care for USO personnel. to prevent differences in psychosocial care between organizations
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Guidelines for psychosocial support for uniformed service organizations (USO) _Hans te Brake, PhD12th European Conference on Traumatic Stress Vienna2-5 June 2011
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
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
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
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
Stepped care model (based on Gersons, 2005) • Applicable to all uniformed service organizations • Leaves room for interpretation and context-specific implementation
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
Peer support: 4 steps 2. deployment peer support 3. delivering peer support 4. advise for referral monitoring by coordinator / team leader 1. detection • 55 recommendations • Uniformed servicemen, peer supporters, team leaders, management
Discussion • Key accomplishments of guidelines for USO: • multidisciplinary agreement on • and organisation-wideadherence to • specific recommendations • regarding the best possiblepsychosocial support • for uniformed services.
Thank you for your attention. Hans te BrakeH.tebrake@amc.uva.nl04.06.2011