Resilience training to enhance emergency and disaster preparedness for public health professionals

Research, as well as case study empiricism, has documented the unusual stress associated with emergency and disaster response functions. Public health personnel who respond under such conditions would seem to be at higher risk for burnout as well as vicarious traumatization. Furthermore, research has suggested that during disaster situations there will be less public health personnel available for response and deployment than originally anticipated. This condition would serve to only increase the risk of burnout and trauma. It would seem prudent if not essential, therefore, to develop programs that may serve to protect and further promote the resiliency of the human public health resource. This paper reports on the development of a one day training program that has shown to increase the perceptions of self-confidence and resiliency in public health and emergency response personnel.