BATON ROUGE, LA — June 6, 2018 — Today, Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome announced the creation of the East Baton Rouge Parish EMS Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) team. The CISM team provides quality support to emergency responders to effectively diminish the long-term effects of stress and PTSD.

Since she took office, Mayor-President Broome has been advocating for employee mental health programs to address the many stress-related incidents of EMS medics in the community.

“I am delighted the CISM team is here to assist medics in coping with day-to-day work stresses and other mental health burdens that can arise from the workload, call volume, and the nature of certain emergency response situations,” said Mayor Broome. “The team is sure to set an even higher standard in Baton Rouge and strengthen the EMS community overall.”

The CISM team helps employees lead healthier lives by providing pre-incident training, on-site support, psychological first aid, peer-to-peer support, and continued care to respondents who experience unmanaged chronic stress. The organizational structure of the team will ensure that in the case of a critical incident, a “Code Green” will activate the CISM team to go to the site and assist as needed.

“The CISM team serves those who serve others, and firmly embodies their motto that 'No one fights alone',” said Chad Guillot, Director of EMS. “The addition of the CISM team helps us take care of our own so that we may provide outstanding care to the residents of East Baton Rouge Parish.”

A detailed outline of the CISM team’s mission and structure of procedures can be found on their team overview information page. The team also outlines various ways to deal with stress, along with emergency contacts which can be found in their online brochure.