Vol. 469 No. 2
71 Cecilia Keaveney asked the Minister for Health the counselling services currently available for ambulance personnel who come across harrowing and extremely traumatic scenes in the course of their everyday duties; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17120/96]
Limerick East): The health boards provide a wide variety of services to all their staff in relation to stressful aspects of their work. These services are made available either through the employee assistance programmes running in the boards; occupational health departments throughout the service or staff counselling and information services as in the Eastern Health Board region. With regard specifically to ambulance personnel, the boards have in place a range of local arrangements which are constantly tailored to meet general requirements as well as specific incidents of post-traumatic stress arising from accidents of a particularly harrowing nature.
Occupational Health Departments provide easy access to confidential, professional support and advisory services, including counselling services for those who may wish to avail of them. The employee assistance service also provides for self-referral or for supervisory staff to refer individual members, or indeed groups of staff for assistance such as counselling, as appropriate. Many boards make use of their own psychology services or where necessary refer staff for specific post-traumatic stress counselling with specialists outside of the board. In addition to these services boards also partake in seminars and courses in relation to post-traumatic stress organised outside the health service, for example, critical incident stress debriefing seminars organised by the Garda etc.
These arrangements are sufficiently flexible to allow individual employees and supervisory staff options in relation to how they deal with such trauma. Every effort is made across the service to alleviate the stress associated with such incidents particularly when they are an everyday aspect of any staff members' duties.
