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TERRE HAUTE, Ind. -- Carolyn Burns is an expert in overcoming adversity. During the past year alone, she recovered after being hit by a drunken driver and successfully battled breast cancer.

She has taught Indiana Country University nursing students skills they will use throughout their careers. Along the way she has also helped hundreds of people deal with very stressful, traumatic events.

Burns, an assistant professor of nursing at ISU, has worked virtually 20 years as a crunch intervention consultant, responding to traumatic events, including Hurricane Andrew, the Oklahoma City bombing, TWA Flying 800, Sept. eleven and the Comair crash in Lexington, Ky. She has besides provided assistance to schools, the military, law enforcement, and healthcare and currently serves equally a crisis consultant to the Airline Airplane pilot Association (ALPA).

A Chicago native who at present lives in Rockville, she began her career in crunch intervention in 1988 as a hospital nurse in Joliet, Ill., working with nurses caring for critically ill patients.

â€Å"I noticed if it was someone they knew, a kid or a patient who had been in the unit for a long time, they had a hard time dealing with those deaths. I would often walk into the lounge and find them crying. I recognized then that there needed to be something done for the caregivers,” she said.

Talking to a peer or someone who tin understand what you’ve been through is an important step in coping with stress. Nurses understand nurses and the stress they feel when patients die, she added.

â€Å"About of us in the medical field don’t go dwelling and discuss our day with our family. We don’t desire to injure or scare them with the things nosotros accept seen”, Burns commented. â€Å"We want to talk to someone who volition understand.

â€Å"You don’t take to suppress the aftermath of a traumatic event,” she said. â€Å"Debriefing can make a difference.”

At that place are seven steps in the debriefing procedure, which allows people to talk nearly and reflect on what they experienced, hash out unusual behaviors since the incident and get recommendations on how to cope. Like many things, timing is everything.

â€Å"I like to look 24 hours after the critical incident to talk with them,” Burns said, â€Å"That’southward when the stress symptoms start.”

The most common stress symptom is difficulty sleeping, she said.

â€Å"I always ask how they slept final night,” the board certified good in traumatic stress said.

People can likewise experience memory problems, headaches, breadbasket upset, have problem concentrating, withdraw from people and activities, feelings of guilt, or abuse alcohol or drugs.

â€Å"Stress affects the whole person,” Burns said.

Throughout the unabridged procedure she avoids asking the obvious question - â€Å"How are you feeling'”

â€Å"Y'all don’t ever want to apply the give-and-take feeling because people volition automatically say ‘I’m fine. There’due south nothing wrong with me’,” she explained.

Instead she asks what she calls â€Å"the big coin question” - What was the worst part of the consequence y'all experienced'

"It gets them thinking about what’s truly bothering them,” Burns said. â€Å"Then you tin figure out a coping program to deal with the effect.”

â€Å"Co-ordinate to Burns, anyone can be trained in this method, which is useful in everyday life.

â€Å"Practice this on your family,” she said, adding information technology is a corking way to become more data from teenagers.

â€Å"Ask ‘Tell me a footling virtually your twenty-four hours. What are your thoughts nearly what that teacher said'’ ‘What was the best role of your day'’ ‘What was the worst part of your twenty-four hour period'’ You won’t become only yes or no answers.”

The procedure also helps get at the center of life’s hard moments.

â€Å"You can practice this with anyone - someone in a machine accident, someone diagnosed with cancer, someone who has lost a loved one,” Burns said.

Jeffery Mitchell, a firewoman/paramedic in Baltimore developed the debriefing process to keep people in the field almost 20 years ago.

â€Å"The goal is to get someone dorsum to work as shortly every bit possible, by having them talk well-nigh the incident and help them bargain with their stress-related symptoms to prevent Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” Burns said.

When the debriefing movement started out, there were just a few people preparation in the technique. In fact, Burns was the 15th person in the country to be trained and certified to acquit Critical Incident Stress Debriefings.

â€Å"Now there are hundreds and probably thousands of people certified to carry the preparation,” she said.

Burns developed and coordinated one of the first infirmary-based critical incident stress debriefing teams in the country. Since she could fill the function of either a nurse or a mental wellness worker she became part of larger team, Northern Illinois Disquisitional Incident Stress Debriefing Team, which debriefed public prophylactic workers.

In 1992, after just four years as a crunch intervention consultant, Burns establish herself on a squad that provided comfort to stressed and overwhelmed workers who had responded to a natural disaster.

â€Å"Hurricane Andrew was my first experience traveling to a debriefing,” she recalled. â€Å"You couldn’t believe the destruction. It was a horrible sight.

While trying to help storm victims, Ruddy Cross workers were beingness attacked, thrown out of the trucks and the trucks were robbed,” she recalled. â€Å"I was shocked as well as scared.”

She returned to Illinois a little sad and depressed, realizing that debriefing is more than a i-time thing.

â€Å"I learned to follow upwards with people in these situations. We conduct a debriefing and go back home and our lives render to normal. They’re left dealing with the consequences. Many times they are in daze and reality doesn’t hit them until a few weeks later,” she said.

â€Å"Burns, who earned her master’s degree in psychiatric nursing, was the first mental wellness person in the country called to work with the airline industry.

â€Å"The airline industry implemented their debriefing plan in 1995 and two months later they had their get-go crash.”

Her starting time call from the airline manufacture came on Halloween 1995, when American Eagle Flying 4184 crashed near Roselawn, Ind.

Burns was listed on a national registry for stress debriefers and was hired from among several candidates because of her nursing background and her empathic demeanor. Although she had never worked with pilots or accident investigators she felt she had what they needed, someone to mind to their story. Burns traveled to Roselawn for a week, where she worked the crash site and debriefed accident investigators.

After the American Eagle crash, the ALPA sent her through basic rubber-schoolhouse, accident investigation school, and advanced accident investigator schoolhouse.

â€Å"This preparation helped me understand the stress a airplane pilot tin experience and learn how to sympathize and speak their language.”

Burns, who recently traveled to New Zealand to start a crunch response team, finds pilots are much more open around her.

â€Å"Most people trust nurses,” she said. â€Å"The listening skills, being attentive, caring and compassionate are traits associated with a nurse.”

She would tap into that compassion, trust and knowledge in society to provide comfort for two loftier-profile airline disasters -- TWA 800 and Sept. xi.

For TWA Flight 800, Burns spent a calendar week with airline families helping them through the grieving process.

Her arrival in New York came with a dose of irony and reality.

â€Å"We flew in and pulled up next to a 747,” Burn down recalled, â€Å"Yous could’ve heard a pin drop on the airplane because it looked virtually identical to the plane that crashed. Information technology really put things in perspective.”

The scene was totally different from her encounter in Roselawn, since TWA 800 exploded in mid-air over a body of water.

â€Å"At that place was wreckage to look at, but no bodies to recover,” Burns said, which fabricated the healing process gut-wrenching.

â€Å"It’s hard to hear their hurting and know you can’t bring their loved ane dorsum,” she said.

When Sept. 11 occurred Burns traveled to New Bailiwick of jersey to help United Airlines personnel and their families.

Burns attended the funerals of the captain and starting time officer of the plane that crashed into the southward tower of the Globe Trade Heart. She spent fourth dimension with the families and has kept in contact with them over the by six years.

â€Å"Healing takes a long fourth dimension and each person grieves at their ain step. You can’t just say ‘It’s been a year, just get over it.’ It is fifty-fifty more difficult when at that place is no torso to view, as with the victims of Sept. eleven.”

She establish herself dealing with a pilot’south family once again in August 2006, with the crash of Comair Flight 5191 in Lexington. She worked with the wife of the captain, who sought Burns out.

â€Å"Families are draining,” Burns said. â€Å"I am emotionally drained afterwards these types of events. When you deal with someone who has suffered a loss, there’s nothing you can exercise to make information technology amend.

â€Å"I offer support and get them the resources they need during this hard fourth dimension. If I had a magic wand I would take away all of their pain but I can’t,” she said. â€Å"Working through grief is just that - piece of work. There is no easy fix.”

Over the years, she has developed some coping mechanisms to deal with tough situations.

No matter where she goes, she carries around a cup or bottle of h2o,

â€Å"If I heard something horrendous, I would beverage water or sing a song in my head then I don’t loose control of my emotions,” she said.

The trademarked high-top Antipodal sneakers she wears are not just for comfort’ they serve a practical purpose likewise.

â€Å"I’ll curve down and lace up my shoes to keep my composure,” she explained.

For Burns, crying is non immune.

â€Å"You lot never want to weep in front of someone you lot are trying to debrief because if you weep they will close down because at present they feel they’ve hurt you. I do my crying before I drive abode or at home. I take been doing this for 20 years and you never become use to it.”

There are times dealing with trauma is rough on her.

â€Å"I take to go talk to someone,” she said. â€Å"I have a stiff faith in God, who I believe put me here to do this work. I hug my son later a debriefing involving a death of a child. I love to fish, so that helps me relax.”

After nearly 20 years of conducting critical incident stress debriefings, she believes she makes a difference in the lives of total strangers.

â€Å"People will not recollect what you say, they’ll remember you were there and you lot lent a manus and offered your compassion. That’s what it’s all about,” Burns said, â€Å"I want to know that I made a difference in someone’s life.”

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Contact: Carolyn Burns, assistant professor of nursing, Indiana State University, 812-237-3480

Writer: Paula Meyer, ISU Communications & Marketing, 812-237-3783 or pmeyer4@isugw.indstate.edu

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Source: https://www.indstate.edu/news/news.php?newsid=1111

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