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A few weeks ago, Connor Fyfe was working a night shift as a volunteer student medic at Carleton University when a call came in. Somewhere in residence, an unnamed student was having a mental health emergency.
Remembering his new mental health first-aid training, Fyfe jumped into action. When his team arrived at the scene, they quickly assessed the patient’s condition to ensure they were not in any danger.
“We were able to determine that that person was not in a state where they were going to hurt themselves,” he said. Once the situation was under control, they listened to the patient and provided them with a card listing resources and support available on campus.
Mental health first-aid is one of a few new capabilities of the Carleton University Student Emergency Response Team (CUSERT), a volunteer force of Canadian Red Cross-trained students, such as Fyfe, who spend part of their spare time on call to respond to medical emergencies around campus.
The service is available to anyone on Carleton’s campus, including all of the university’s staff and nearly 30,000 students.
Prompted by an uptick in mental health calls in recent years, volunteers have received new mental health first-aid training, aimed at helping them identify the risk of suicide or self-harm and provide reassurance and support.
They’ll also carry certain medications such as EpiPens and puffers.
CUSERT is funded by a levy of $1.31 per semester charged to the undergraduate student population. But as the group expands and incurs new expenses, that levy soon won’t be enough. The medic squad is now asking the school’s 4,000 graduate students to also pay the same fee — and put it to a referendum, which runs until Thursday.
Without new funding in the next several years, the program is at risk of cutting some of its services.
“We are getting towards the end where our budget gets a little thin so we thought now was the best time to introduce a referendum to add a relatively modest levy to the grad population,” said Andrew Chen, CUSERT communications executive, in an interview.
This new levy would yield around $6,000 to $7,000 in new funding. CUSERT’s annual budget is typically between $45,000 and $50,000 per year, Chen said.
If the referendum does not pass, Chen said they will have to explore other avenues for funding, such as charging more for their first-aid training sessions, which are offered at-cost as a service to the community. He said later down the road there may be a possibility of increasing the levy charged to undergrad students.
“We would likely have to consider cutting training/equipment/practices that are above and beyond our basic first responder certification (such as mental health first-aid),” Chen said in an email. He added this would only happen if they cannot increase their funding at some point in the next few years.
It’s not clear if the referendum is likely to succeed, said Eric Hitsman, president of Carleton’s Graduate Student Association. Even if the “yes” vote is the majority, he said the university’s board of governors may deem it invalid if a quorum of 15 per cent membership in the vote is not reached.
Fyfe said the expanded scope of medical services came about because they saw a need for it. More mental health training, in particular, was brought about after CUSERT noticed some two years ago that calls of this nature were on the rise.
“We felt that we weren’t equipped well enough to deal with the increased call volume that we saw related to mental health emergencies,” he said. “It’s still increasing, actually,” likely because of more awareness about CUSERT, he said.
They also saw an increase in anaphylaxis calls, which is why they will soon carry EpiPens. He added they considered carrying naloxone, a drug used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, but decided against it, partly because they don’t get many calls to use it and also because university security officers already have it.
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Remembering his new mental health first-aid training, Fyfe jumped into action. When his team arrived at the scene, they quickly assessed the patient’s condition to ensure they were not in any danger.
“We were able to determine that that person was not in a state where they were going to hurt themselves,” he said. Once the situation was under control, they listened to the patient and provided them with a card listing resources and support available on campus.
Mental health first-aid is one of a few new capabilities of the Carleton University Student Emergency Response Team (CUSERT), a volunteer force of Canadian Red Cross-trained students, such as Fyfe, who spend part of their spare time on call to respond to medical emergencies around campus.
The service is available to anyone on Carleton’s campus, including all of the university’s staff and nearly 30,000 students.
Prompted by an uptick in mental health calls in recent years, volunteers have received new mental health first-aid training, aimed at helping them identify the risk of suicide or self-harm and provide reassurance and support.
They’ll also carry certain medications such as EpiPens and puffers.
CUSERT is funded by a levy of $1.31 per semester charged to the undergraduate student population. But as the group expands and incurs new expenses, that levy soon won’t be enough. The medic squad is now asking the school’s 4,000 graduate students to also pay the same fee — and put it to a referendum, which runs until Thursday.
Without new funding in the next several years, the program is at risk of cutting some of its services.
“We are getting towards the end where our budget gets a little thin so we thought now was the best time to introduce a referendum to add a relatively modest levy to the grad population,” said Andrew Chen, CUSERT communications executive, in an interview.
This new levy would yield around $6,000 to $7,000 in new funding. CUSERT’s annual budget is typically between $45,000 and $50,000 per year, Chen said.
If the referendum does not pass, Chen said they will have to explore other avenues for funding, such as charging more for their first-aid training sessions, which are offered at-cost as a service to the community. He said later down the road there may be a possibility of increasing the levy charged to undergrad students.
“We would likely have to consider cutting training/equipment/practices that are above and beyond our basic first responder certification (such as mental health first-aid),” Chen said in an email. He added this would only happen if they cannot increase their funding at some point in the next few years.
It’s not clear if the referendum is likely to succeed, said Eric Hitsman, president of Carleton’s Graduate Student Association. Even if the “yes” vote is the majority, he said the university’s board of governors may deem it invalid if a quorum of 15 per cent membership in the vote is not reached.
Fyfe said the expanded scope of medical services came about because they saw a need for it. More mental health training, in particular, was brought about after CUSERT noticed some two years ago that calls of this nature were on the rise.
“We felt that we weren’t equipped well enough to deal with the increased call volume that we saw related to mental health emergencies,” he said. “It’s still increasing, actually,” likely because of more awareness about CUSERT, he said.
They also saw an increase in anaphylaxis calls, which is why they will soon carry EpiPens. He added they considered carrying naloxone, a drug used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, but decided against it, partly because they don’t get many calls to use it and also because university security officers already have it.
查看原文...
