CU Nursing - Spring/Summer 2020 - 19

CLASS NOTES

CU Nursing Trains
Tomorrow's Front-Line
Providers en Masse in
Mental Health First Aid

By Debra Melani

ike most of her classmates, Emma Bielfeldt struggled
to finish her thought as she answered her fellow student's question. She faltered, tried again and finally
gave up laughing at her inability to speak coherently.
It's hard to think straight when someone is whispering orders in your ear.

Imagine if the voices were always there.
That was what Bielfeldt and her classmates were asked to do during
the College of Nursing's first-ever, mass Mental Health First Aid
(MHFA) training on Jan. 22. And, like many of the exercises they
completed that day, the lesson on living with psychoses was a
powerful one.
"I totally see how very confusing and unsettling that could be,"
Bielfeldt said during the class debrief of the exercise, which involved one student speaking orders through a rolled up piece of
paper as another student asked her questions. "It makes it very
hard to be able to concentrate," she said. "Then there were times
when I wanted to respond to the voice and not to the person."

INITIATIVE CERTIFIES TOMORROW'S FRONT LINE PROVIDERS
With a rash of behavioral health issues from suicidal thoughts to
opioid abuse taxing providers across the country, and the nation's
largest healthcare profession increasingly on the front line, CU
Nursing and community partner Centura Health joined forces in
the effort. About 170 first-year students embarking on nursing
careers were certified during the inaugural training.
"As nurses, we need to recognize and respond in a therapeutic
way when we see symptoms or concerns related to mental health
and substance use issues," said Tammy Spencer, interim assistant
dean of CU Nursing's undergraduate program.
Spencer spearheaded the effort with Assistant Dean of Student
Affairs and Diversity Shane Hoon. CU Nursing student Lilly Berger,
MSW, largely orchestrated the partnership with Centura.

MHFA PROVIDES DOUBLE BENEFIT
FOR NURSING STUDENTS

STUDENT SAYS TRAINING
FILLS AN IMPORTANT GAP

The Australian-based MHFA
program has grown from 250,000
trained U.S. first-aiders and
5,000 instructors in 2014 to over
2 million first-aiders and 19,000
instructors in this country today.

"I think it's smart," student Brittany
Andrighetti said of the newly required training on break from one
of the seven classes held across
campus. Fourteen volunteer certified instructors from the Anschutz
Medical Campus and Centura Health
helped make the inaugural training
happen.

Aims of the program include inspiring empathy, reducing stigma
and teaching people how to defuse a mental health crisis safely
using evidence-based steps (much
like CPR).
MHFA also teaches self-awareness and care surrounding mental
well-being, making it doubly fitting
for healthcare providers, said Barb
Becker, director of MHFA Colorado.
"We know that nursing is a highstress profession," Becker said. "So
being equipped early on with tools
in terms of recognizing mental
health issues and finding resources
for both their patients and themselves is extremely valuable."

"I think that we as healthcare providers see someone dealing with
mental health illness almost every
single day that we're in practice, but
we don't get a lot of training in it,"
said Andrighetti, a certified nursing
assistant and CU Nursing BSN candidate. "The more awareness that
we have the better providers we are
going to be."
While the subject matter was often
intense, such as lessons in suicide
prevention, they were important for
anyone, especially college students,
Andrighetti said.
Continued on next page

CU Nursing - Spring/Summer 2020

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