SimVoice™ Medic App - For Firefighter and EMS Workers
One of the most challenging situations for EMS workers involves the interaction with persons suffering from mental illness. These interactions can be complicated further if the person is experiencing auditory hallucinations that are acting as a barrier to communication.
Professionals in mental health care have suggested that EMS workers could benefit from understanding that people in mental crisis may display bizarre behavior as a result of their illness that may be wrongfully interpreted as anger, aggression or non-compliance. The SimVoice™ Medic was developed to facilitate a method of compassionate, experiential learning, that allows officers to experience interaction with the EMS workers from the perspective of the person suffering from mental illness.
This is accomplished by creating crisis intervention training scenarios where one of the trainee role play a person with mental illness while fellow trainee employ de-escalation through crisis intervention. The role playing trainee wears Bluetooth headphones that allow a tablet or smart phone loaded with the SimVoice™ Medic app to create the sensation of auditory hallucinations. The scenarios and voices are designed to interact together and create an incredibly realistic experience that can be controlled and guided by the instructor through the SimVoice™ Medic app.
The SimVoice™ Medic hallucinations tracks are designed to include reference to either an alien, male third party, female third party or a knife. This creates a more realistic scenario that forces the EMS trainee to apply proper communication, decisions making and appropriate crisis intervention. Ultimately, the goal of each scenario is to arrive at a peaceful resolution through proper de-escalation techniques. The instructor guides this by manipulating the SimVoice™ Medic hallucinations with the interactive display on the mobile device. The voices can be escalated towards non-compliance, or de-escalated towards compliance based on the performance of the trainee.
The SimVoice™ Medic assists in achieving three primary objectives:
- Create a true barrier to communication for the scenario.
- Guide the level of compliance through the ability to change the theme of the voices.
- Most importantly, allow the trainee to experience the challenges faced by persons experiencing mental illness in an effort to create empathy and compassion.
Q: What are some of the causes of auditory hallucinations?
There are numerous mental illnesses that can cause auditory hallucinations such as: Schizophrenia, dementia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder, and PTSD. Other situations that can cause auditory hallucinations include: Alcohol and drugs (amphetamines, ecstasy, LSD, cocaine, etc), brain tumors, epilepsy, encephalitis and meningitis.
Q: I have seen other websites that allow you to experience the sensations of auditory hallucinations, how does the SimVoice™ Medic differ?
A: The SimVoice™ Medic is specifically designed for Firefighter and EMS Workers training. The voices include acknowledgement of a alien entity presence, male or female third party and an incremental evolution to reward proper crisis intervention. All of these factors can be controlled by the instructor through the SimVoice™ Medic interactive display on the tablet or smart phone touch screen.
Q: Is the SimVoice™ Medic really free for Firefighter and EMS Workers?
A: Yes. Setcan created the SimVoice™ Medic as a way to give back to Firefighter and and the community at large. We believe the SimVoice™ is a powerful tool that will create empathy, compassion and understanding for Firefighter and EMS workers dealing with people in crisis.
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