Donation from Intermountain St. Mary’s and Chevron to Enhance Mental Health for First Responders

CareFlight of the Rockies Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) Team recently received $25,000 donations from both Intermountain Health’s St. Mary’s Foundation and Chevron during an event held on the St. Mary’s Hospital helipad.

CareFlight of the Rockies is an air ambulance service for western Colorado, eastern Utah, and parts of New Mexico and started in 1976. The CareFlight CISM Team was created in 2020 in response to the mental health needs of the CareFlight team and other first responders in the three-state area they serve.

First responders including crews for CareFlight, search and rescue, ski patrol, emergency medical technicians, paramedics, rural hospital emergency room physicians, nurses and technicians, and fire department personnel, all respond to life-threatening medical situations daily.

“The situations we as first responders encounter leave a lasting mark on us as caregivers. In our smaller, rural communities, we’re often providing care for, and sometimes losing people we know personally. And afterward, that can make an already traumatic situation we experience, even more difficult emotionally,” said Kelly Thompson, RN, a flight nurse and chief of operations for CareFlight of the Rockies.

The CareFlight stress management team — composed of 10 first responders – currently provides behavioral health support to the larger group of first responders. Support includes mental health focused debriefings and listening sessions held at a moment’s notice for hospital emergency medicine department staff and first responders after especially traumatic events, whether onsite at the hospital, or out in the field.

“Chevron has made significant donations to CareFlight for the last 10 years. Their recent generous donation, which is being matched by our hospital foundation will help fund the final, crucial piece of the stress management team, providing a local, licensed clinical counselor clinically trained and experienced in first responder trauma therapy for the next three years,” said Carmen Shipley, executive director of philanthropy for Intermountain St. Mary’s Foundation.

“CareFlight is one of the most important components of this region’s medical response capabilities, and Chevron is proud to have supported this team for many years. Their work is critical to our community, often stressful and full of emotions. We now have an opportunity to dedicate our funding to the Critical Incident Stress Management Team to ensure these dedicated caregivers receive the support and relief they need to deal with the incidents they witness on a regular basis,” said Cary Baird, stakeholder engagement and social investment advisor for Chevron’s Rockies Business Unit.

People who work as first responders are called for everybody’s worst day for the patient and family. They carry a lot of emotional burdens, from saving lives on a daily basis to the emotional toll of being involved in so many traumatic events.

“Across the nation, there’s been a culture among first responders where we weren’t allowed to show emotion and just moved on to the next emergency patient. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, first responders were hit especially hard, seeing a lot of deaths and then the angst about if we might bring COVID-19 home to our families,” said Thompson.

“Creating a stress management team that can reach all the first responders in our community is unique. It’s helped tear down the stigma that first responders don’t need behavioral health support. It’s created a culture change and safe space for everyone to know sometimes you’re not going to be OK, and each one of us may need some counseling. We’ve had medical transport organizations in other states reach out to us about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it,” she added.

The trauma trained counselor has office hours for counseling and works with the stress management team to provide education, training, and tools to each crew of first responders on-site to help them recognize behavioral health challenges in themselves or other team members and know how to address them early, before it gets worse.

About Intermountain Health

Headquartered in Utah with locations in six states and additional operations across the western U.S., Intermountain Health is a nonprofit system of 34 hospitals, 400 clinics, medical groups with some 4,600 employed physicians and advanced care providers, a health plans division called Select Health with more than one million members, and other health services. Helping people live the healthiest lives possible, Intermountain is committed to improving community health and is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare by using evidence-based best practices to consistently deliver high-quality outcomes at sustainable costs. For more information or updates, see https://intermountainhealthcare.org/news.