Just got back from the Bay Area CISM Summit at the Centre in Santa Clara. A dozen agencies were represented – fire, police, dispatchers, trauma center ER nurses, county mental health and others. Even Oakland Fire managed to find their way to the meeting… eventually. We decided that they need personal GPS units for navigation. But what would a CISM team meeting be without somebody to tease?
It seems to me that the big theme of the meeting was to figure out more ways to support each other, including sharing our accumulated expertise, wisdom and experience – which is a large part of the purpose of this web site.
As always, there was lots of good training and sharing of what works and doesn’t work in CISM and other forms of support. And food, too.
Nick Arnett has been part of the Bay Area CISM Team since 2005, has led or help lead dozens of defusings and debriefings for first responders, schools and communities, including the Haiti earthquake, and assists in CISM training and events. He was a paramedic in the Pittsburgh, Pa. area in the late 1970s and 1980s, where he also headed the volunteer program for the