On Wednesday, October 28th was a special day for our Team and our new Teammates from Dorchester County EMS. A while back we helped as DCEMS recruited members from their ranks to become a part of their new internal peer team as well as members of our Lowcountry EMS Support Team. We assisted Jennifer Brown and Patsy Helzer as they put together their plan and their seven-member team to begin serving their fellow paramedics and EMTs. Our duty was to provide the initial training to their new members. That included them completing applications and several online prerequisite programs before attending our one-day “Introduction to Peer Team Training”.
Due to their team members being on different shifts, we knew we would not have even numbers for the two days that it would require to train everyone and that the numbers for the classes would be small. So, we held our training for two of their folks and one other new Lowcountry Firefighter Support Team member from the Mt. Pleasant Fire Department. While this was an unusually small class, their enthusiasm was nonetheless exciting, and it allowed us to try a new format in a roundtable setting.
Thanks to Lee Hopkins, our Team’s Pee Dee Region Coordinator, Sherie Corbett, one of our Summerville area clinicians, Rich Robinson, of the Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy, and Gerald Mishoe, our Executive Director, for their dedication to the cause as we joined together to present the program for them today.
A group of the remaining DCEMS peer team members will join us on November 18th for the second class joined by three members representing the Salisbury, North Carolina Fire Department, five members from the Joint Base/Charleston Air Force Base Fire Department , one from the Dorchester County 911 Center, and one from Berkeley County EMS. We have some other openings for the class if anyone is interested in joining us. Just send us a message and let us know.
Special thanks to Patsy Helzer and Erica Briles of DCEMS, and Melissa Clifford for the MPFD, for their time and dedication to the future of our Team in attending today. We are excited for you to be a part of our growth!