By Thomas Miller
The Government of Alberta introduced Bill 1 in the legislature on Thursday.
The bill proposes to make it easier for first responders to access treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder from the Workers’ Compensation Board.
According to a government press release, the changes mean first responders such as fire fighters, police officers, sheriffs and paramedics will not have to prove that post-tramautic stress disorder is related to their line of work.
A spokesperson for WCB Alberta said that volunteer first responders are covered for work related post-traumatic stress disorder, however, Gordon Hart of the Lloydminster Rescue Squad is disappointed that there is no mention of the non-profit volunteer sector in the release.
“Groups like ours may not be on this agenda,” said Hart in a phone interview. “They say first responders, which includes fire fighters, police, sheriffs and paramedics. It does not include us or ground search and rescue.”
Hart added that he thinks it should be everyone who has to go on calls like that where they may have to find and recover human remains, though he said his group would not be affected because they are Saskatchewan based.
In order to deal with those kind of calls, Hart said the rescue squad always has a debriefing to talk about what happened.
“We’ve got to look at their feelings, what went right, what went wrong,” he explained.
“We remind our people that we’re there to help, we didn’t cause the collisions. There’s farm accidents and that or industrial accidents where people have been crushed or killed on scene. So you’ve got to make sure your members are not blaming themselves because they didn’t get there on time.”
Those debriefings, Hart continued, help members sleep soundly at night and give them the ability to go out on the next call and do their job. “It only takes one real bad call,” he said. “We’ve done numerous calls where somebody has passed away and it affects each person differently. So you have to make sure that every person is looked after on an individual basis and on a group basis so when you get out there to do the job again there are no problems and everyone is able to function to the best of their abilities.”
Cam Peneff, the chairman of the Lakeland Regional Safety Committee, said he has a brother who is a fire fighter and over the years, through dealing indirectly with first responders, he has seen the damage that post- traumatic stress disorder can cause.
“You can put all the clinical terms to it, but in human terms it’s unpleasant,” said Peneff. “It’s unpleasant watching someone go through it, it’s got to be absolutely terrible dealing with it and not having the resources to deal with it.”
Peneff said the fact that WCB recognizes it as a legitimate work-related injury is positive – that would be addressed for first responders in the bill – but access to treatment is the biggest obstacle in some cases.
“For a lot of people PTSD doesn’t exist – it’s a figment of your imagination – whereas if it’s recognized by WCB as a compensable injury then it’s got to be recognized and it justifies the feelings that they’re having and it makes it OK to have those feelings. We have to realize it’s OK to have feelings, but it’s also OK to sort them out and resolve them,” he said.