Hi. In this video we will explain what defusing is. Defusing is a very useful post-emergency deactivation technique, it's a brief technique which should be applied immediately, it lasts between 20 minutes and one hour and it's applied in the moment of deactivation of the assistance team. Which are this technique's objectives? On one side informing both about the incident itself and about the stress the team has suffered. On the other side minimizing the stress reactions in that picking up moment, when the team is going home and strengthening their environment, their support social network as well as reminding each person of the team's confrontation capacities, of each participant, and not only reminding it but also reinforcing the participants' capacities to face this kind of situations and analyzing each person's needs and welfare. So what is defusing? Defusing is a technique which could be an informal meeting, it isn't especially structured, it's an immediate application technique, it's a technique on a way of making a coordinated account on what happened and as a self-care technique it has a very important preventing value. On another side, what defusing isn't? Defusing isn't a therapy session, it isn't a therapeutically session. We don't have to treat someone with defusing, or evaluating, diagnosing him, or making him a screening, it's not defusing. It's neither doing an uncontrolled ventilation of the emotions we have lived during the incident or something that goes on for a long time. We wouldn't be making a defusing for two hours or a whole afternoon. So defusing is an immediate self-care intervention technique which should be protocol after all the assistance in emergencies for all those participant groups that have acted in that emergency. It's important because it's a way of taking care of oneself and of our team, our team responsibles, the unit leaders should protocol and systematize defusing sessions after an intervention, as they would minimize reactions and the possible inconveniences derived from a high stress level assistance. Which are defusing phases? We've said it's an informal meeting, it's not very structured but we could identify three stages in which this meeting develops. These stages are an introduction, an exploration stage on the facts and an information and closure of the session stage. Let's see with more details how these different stages are organized, what are they exactly. In the first stage, the introduction stage, we explain how the session will work, what we would call the setting, we explain the way it works, its objectives, and we ask people to have questions done at the same moment, putting things on place, setting all its components, making clear to everyone what it will consist on, let them know what this session is and what it isn't, the fact is the teams are systematically applied, they are used to using this technique so they should make their objectives clear from the beginning, so that everybody is someone new or that after a situation like that, after assisting, we might not be focused, we said our attention capacity is affected, so if we are told the objectives are A, B and C and this will last 20 minutes, half an hour, and it consists on doing this small exercise all together before going home. During the exploration stage it's all about telling what happened, how the assistance was, what have we done, what we haven't done, what we have lived, what we have seen, even if we think that in some case we need a special process, or the boss recommends to make a small monitoring in this case because there are still many doubts or you had an unexpected reaction even for yourself, we will work on how you reacted and monitor it. During the last stage, in the information stage we make a summary on everything the participants explained during the previous stage, during the exploration stage. We make a summary of the explanation of the assistance process, of how the success happened and of how we have reacted. They are normalized, we remember all the normal stress reactions and their evolution. During the next hours, the next days, which are the normal reactions. During the previous week we saw a video on the normal reaction patterns in adults. Obviously in assistants these reaction patterns will be a bit different due to these professionals' formation and experience. But it's always good reminding them of which are these reactions and normalize them. It is also very important that in this session ending they are given the stress confrontation and basic emotions management guidelines for the first days. It's very important to reinforce all these behaviors that the participants have lived in the past, and all these behaviors we know that increase resilience and recovery capacity in these situations. Taking into account that when they are assistants their affectation hasn't been as victims, it's been a victimization of the assistant in this sense. He has been exposed to a lot of stress, to an exceptional stress situation as people who lived the emergency, but with a role which tends to distance, to professionalism, but this doesn't mean it won't affect them. We must take into account the studies which document the fact that participants are affected, as we have seen in previous videos, in which these kind of affectations are translated, by default and by behaviors excess. Burn out, which you have already seen, as lack of inhibition behaviors or excessive control feelings, that they think they can do more that then actually can. It's important that the participant is properly situated, that he is given the guidelines to confront the management of the stress lived during his workday. Usually defusing will be done by the coordinator or the unit boss or the responsible in the participants group. This person needs to guarantee the fact that people can freely express themselves, that they feel understood, they feel supported, guarantee the fact that the basic self-care guidelines, guarantee that the symptoms will be normalized, going home deactivated, that they have passed from a stress moment full of adrenaline to a moment in which they are already picking up, to demobilization, and they are able to explain what happened to avoid having to explain it too many times at home. Usually we also recommend making the defusing so that they don't have to go home and vomit all these experiences to feel better, with their couple or their families, as it might be damaging for the ones who are listening and aren't ready for all this. So it's a preventive way of emotional damage, of emotional imbalance. Finally it is very important that we give assistants the option to accept their own reactions. Usually what we said now, about assistants, this figure which isn't affected by the discouragement to which they are somehow used. Living these experience is their job. But this doesn't mean it can't affect them. And it is very important helping the participants to accept their own reactions and their own emotions. Usually the fact of being a participant involves that we are affected more by some experiences and less by others. It also depends on the identification degree of the traumatic experience in which we have just assisted. So it is important being able to detect it as assistants, being able to accept it and confront it properly to go on with our job and with our life.
