First Responder Grief: Hope for Healing Stacked-Up Grief

Requesting This Course:

• This course is being offered as a Virtual Training! Learn More & Register
• For information on requesting this course for your organization through our Speakers Bureau program, please contact Millie Morehouse at [email protected].

Course Description:

This 2-day (14 hour) course explores grief, traumatic grief, and their companion lack of hope. These feelings may be connected to first response work, critical incident stress management, and living in general. The training engages and identifies abundant exercises designed to lead participants to personal awareness of grief; a working ability to support first responder peers in grief; and self-reflection about their own stacked-up grief and how it affects themselves, their workplace peer groups, their CISM outreach, and their families. The course addresses the core elements of grief, grieving, and mourning as well as symbolic actions and other memorialization to support self-reflection, post-traumatic growth, and healing.

Learning Objectives:

• Objectives cross two training days. At the completion of this course, participants will be able to:
• Identify grief, grieving, and mourning as they occur in real life situations, particularly in the context of first response
• Understand and adapt the concept of hope as it applies to critical incident grief in various settings
• Explain why grief can be difficult to address in contemporary Western cultures
• Describe how and in what ways “stacked-up” grief applies to them
• Recognize and identify the differences and similarities between grief and grief overlaid with trauma (or traumatic grief)
• Apply practical strategies for addressing both old and new griefs, as well as doing grief maintenance work
• Developing a case-specific ceremony, ritual, or memorial that addresses first responder grief
• Learn to engage self-care in grief situations after critical incidents in which personal and professional worlds collide
• Use Grief Education to supplement CISM’s SAFER-R as a way to help unpack first responder grief

Certificates and Continuing Education:

General Contact Hours: 

Two Day Course; 14 Contact Hours: 1.4 General CEUs from University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) Dept. of Emergency Health Services Professional and Continuing Education (PACE). Based on a formula of 1 Continuing Education Unit for every 10 contact/classroom hours.

ICISF Certificate of Completion:

After the completion of this ICISF course, with verified full attendance, participants are eligible to receive an electronic ICISF Certificate of Completion including General Continuing Education Units. Participants are required to complete a course evaluation prior to receiving this Certificate of Completion.

Completion of ICISF courses and receipt of an ICISF Certificate of Completion does not attest to competence in the field, nor does it provide certification in the field of CISM. 

Profession Specific CEUs:

If you are seeking continuing education requirements for a specific profession, contacting the relevant state licensing board is the best way to ensure you have the most up-to-date and accurate information. They can provide you with specific details regarding whether a Certificate of Completion from a particular course or program will be accepted towards your continuing education requirements.

If the ICISF course you attend is offered through:

ICISF Virtual Training, Online Training, or Conference, it is approved for the following:

• NAADAC – the Association for Addiction Professionals
  14 CE Credits; Expiration Date – February 28, 2027

This course has been approved by International Critical Incident Stress Foundation (ICISF), as a NAADAC Approved Education Provider, for educational credits. NAADAC Provider # 87914, International Critical Incident Stress Foundation (ICISF), is responsible for all aspects of the programing.

ICISF Speakers Bureau Program: It is up to the Sponsoring Agency to apply for profession-specific Continuing Education Units (CEUs) if they choose to do so. 

** Please check with your state licensing board prior to registration to see if they will accept the Certificate of Completion as a means for continuing education.

*PLEASE NOTE: These hours are only applicable towards courses offered at Virtual Trainings, Conferences, Online Courses, and the World Congress.

Learn more on our ICISF Continuing Education Information page.