Trauma Training at St. Paul's Hospital

Today was the "BIG" trauma training and we had almost 60 people pre-register. This was both wonderful and a big problem, as the room we had planned to use at St. Paul's Hospital could only seat about 25. A new room in the School of Nursing was designated about 5:00 yesterday, and amazingly, just about everyone eventually arrived at the new location today.

The room was fairly modern and even came with a power point projector, but for some reason there was no electricity in the building. Before I knew what was happening multiple workmen appeared and ran an extremely long cable from another building to our room and voila -- electricity! There is something to be said in having the Dean of the Medical School sponsoring your talk.

Dr. Mesfin was very gracious and the school provided coffee at our morning break. The participants were psychologists, social workers, doctors and students. It was a great opportunity for so many different professional to get together and I hope it results in greater communication between the various fields.

Unfortunately, I was so busy with setting up equipment and answering questions that I forgot to take a picture, so you will have to imagine a room than normally held 35 students with 55 people sitting in it. At first the attendees were a little skeptical, but they soon warmed to the workshop and by the end of it, everyone was saying how much they had learned.

Psychotherapy is in its infancy here and trauma therapy is unknown. Many therapists and social workers are now interested in our upcoming EMDR therapy next November. I feel that I have raised the level of awareness of many, many professionals as to the importance of working with both mind and body, as well as working with both left and right sides of the brain.

Dorothy