The Erie community and first responders are continuing to heal following Friday evening\u2019s mass shooting. As the people who responded to the scene process what happened, resources are being made available to help them cope.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
EmergyCare is prioritizing the mental health of its staff by offering support following traumatic incidents and working to establish additional peer counseling services.<\/p>\n
When an ambulance pulls out of the bay at EmergyCare, first responders never know what they may encounter when they arrive at a scene. While they must remain focused on their duties, what they witness can have a lasting emotional effect.<\/p>\n
Matthew Bennett, the Director of Operations at EmergyCare, said staff members are given 30 minutes to an hour to take a break following a traumatic incident. This is all dependent on the situation. The organization is also working to establish a peer support group for employees who want to talk through their experiences.<\/p>\n
Bennett said many personnel have already taken advantage of the resources available and find it helpful to talk through what they encounter. Bennett said he thinks having a peer support group will be another great service.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis support group will have a group of individuals vetted by management who can conduct and act like a resource and peer counselor. We recognize not everyone wants to go the route of peer counseling. Sometimes talking to our peers is the best therapy we can give,\u201d Bennett said.<\/p>\n
EmergyCare is also working with local fire departments, the 911 Center and other first responder agencies to develop a broader peer counseling network.<\/p>\n
The goal is to give first responders from different agencies who responded to the same scene an opportunity to talk with others who understand what they experienced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Erie community and first responders are continuing to heal following Friday evening\u2019s mass shooting. As the people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[125734,42486,23756,136,138,137,13068,11374,47,125733,125735,36518,59483],"class_list":["post-306582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-counseling","tag-emergency-medical-services","tag-emergycare","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-first-responders","tag-mass-shooting","tag-mental-health","tag-peer-support","tag-support-group","tag-therapy","tag-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}