Thanks.
You're right about the critical incident stress management piece around certain specific instances, such as shootings or whatever, and I think we have a fairly good handle on that. What we don't have the handle on that we need presently, as Chief Superintendent Tousignant mentioned, is the pilot that started in January of this year. Two are going to be running. One that began yesterday is continuing today and tomorrow on Vancouver Island. We look at something Mrs. Smith talked about, the cumulative effect of all the stress and tragedy that we see on a daily basis. During that time there's psycho-education.
One of the terms that I steal from the military is that as we walk through life we pick up all these rocks and put them in our rucksack. At times the rucksack becomes too heavy. Our backpack gets too heavy, so we are trying these programs to get rid of some of these rocks by talking about the specific things in our work world that cause the emotional stuff. We go to tragic events such as car accidents--and as a nurse you would know this--that are absolutely abnormal in our everyday world. However, when we have these normal reactions to them, we think they're abnormal because either we're six feet three inches or we wear a uniform or everybody looks to us for support, so we never allow that to get out. We put a plexiglas wall in front of us when we go to an accident and see death and destruction, whereas the natural response would likely be to sit on the curb and cry with everyone else. However, in our world that's not acceptable. That's not what we're hired for.