Midstate EMS CISM Team

09/13/2025

07/16/2025

CISM training opportunities.

🚨 Now Open for Registration! 🚨
Join us virtually July 28–30 for the ICISF Assisting Individuals in Crisis & Group Crisis Intervention course.

This 3-day training is ideal for first responders, peer support teams, and crisis professionals looking to build skills in emotional first aid, defusing, and Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD).

🗓️ July 28–30, 2025
🕘 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (Virtual)
💻 Register here: https://mhanys.org/registration-icisf/
💵 $300 per person

07/07/2025

🚨 First Responders!
Want to make a difference behind the scenes? We're gearing up to launch our new text message-based peer support program, and we need experienced first responders like you to join our team as Peer Support Advocates. Our next virtual training session is coming up soon, on July 26 and 27 (9am-1pm both days). Don't miss out, this will be the last session for a while!!

Apply at pwcnny.org/peervolunteer

05/13/2025

May is a time to raise awareness of those living with mental or behavioral health issues and to help reduce the stigma so many experience. Hospitals and health systems play an important role in providing behavioral health care and helping patients find resources available in their community. If you know someone or you yourself need help, please feel free to reach out and we can connect you to the people who can help. It’s ok to not be ok.

04/25/2025

The Ones Who Showed Up
By: Sophie Fuller

We don’t get here alone. None of us. Behind every competent medic is someone who stayed after a shift to walk them through the hard calls, the messy feelings, the why-didn’t-I-do-it-different moments. Not a PowerPoint. Not a protocol update. A person.

Mentorship in EMS doesn’t wear a name tag or introduce itself formally. It looks like a glance across the bench seat that says, You’ve got this. It sounds like, You did everything right, even when the outcome says otherwise. It’s someone handing you a Gatorade instead of a lecture after your first rough code. It’s the partner who lets you cry on the ride back and still treats you like a badass afterward.

In this job, growth doesn’t come from climbing a ladder—it comes from being built. Brick by brick, mistake by mistake, call by call. And the builders? They’re the ones who remember what it felt like to be new. Who don’t gatekeep the lessons they learned the hard way. Who teach not because it’s in their job description, but because someone once did it for them.

The best mentors don’t demand your respect—they earn it, in the quiet way they lead, in how they treat the most difficult patients, in how they never make you feel small for asking questions. They correct without humiliating. They push without punishing. They protect you—not from the work, but from the self-doubt that comes with it.

You don’t always get to choose your mentor in EMS. Sometimes it’s the salty old medic you were warned about. Sometimes it’s the EMT with fewer certs but twice the heart. Sometimes it’s someone you’ll never see again—but in one call, they change how you’ll do the job forever.

And when it’s your turn, you pay it forward. Because you remember what it felt like to not know. And you remember who showed up anyway.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t in tears while writing this— because it matters, it changed me, it built me.

04/11/2025

Rochester is hosting a ResponderStrong Train-the-Trainer event at the Public Safety Training Facility - PSTF on June 4th.

Registration is free and there are both in person and virtual options.

Registration link: https://responderstrong.org/train-the-trainer/

Scroll to the bottom for regsitration.

04/08/2025

The Division of State EMS is excited to formally announce the inaugural New York State EMS Mental Health & Wellness Symposium on June 9, 2025, in Saratoga Springs!

This event is meant for EMS providers, EMS educators, and EMS leaders to be able to bring information and tools for mental health and wellness to their regions and agencies.

Topics at the Symposium will include:

• Building a peer program at your EMS agency
• Fatigue Management and improving overall wellness
• Emotional support dogs and EMS
• CARES UP Mental Health Program

Registration for the event is complimentary- but limited to 100 seats. Registration: https://apps.health.ny.gov/pubpal/builder/survey/2025-ems-mental-wellness-symposi

04/01/2025

: Over 6,000 first responders completed a survey conducted as part of New York's inaugural first responder mental health needs assessment.

OFPC Deputy State Fire Administrator Luci Labriola-Cuffe & OIEC Assistant Director Amanda Schultz discussed the findings on WTEN's Empire State Weekly.

▶️ Watch Segment: www.news10.com/news/ny-capitol-news/empire-state-weekly/report-first-responders-face-mental-health-stigma/

▶️ Read the Assessment:https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2025-02/First-Responder-MHNA-Final-Report.pdf

03/28/2025

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03/28/2025

Please help honor the memory of John Nagy. He will always be missed.

02/18/2025

Send a message to learn more

12/10/2024

Good read and information about the shortage in EMS.