Grad champions peer support for 9-1-1 operators and dispatchers
That calm voice you hear when you dial 9-1-1 in an emergency? Behind it is a human who’s as vulnerable to the impacts of trauma as any first responder physically on the scene, says Nicole Israel. That’s why Nicole, who recently graduated from SFU’s First Responders Trauma Prevention and Recovery Certificate program, has made it her mission to support the mental health of emergency call takers and dispatchers.
Nicole is a trainer for E-Comm 9-1-1, the organization that handles over two million 9-1-1 calls a year across B.C. and provides dispatch services for police and fire departments. She got her start in the field more than 20 years ago while finishing her degree in psychology at SFU. She was hired part time by the Saanich police department as a call taker and dispatcher—and returned to the department after graduation.
“I really loved the job and decided to make a career of it,” she explains. “There are not a lot of other jobs out there where you can really have that impact for people on a daily basis. Call takers and dispatchers really are the first, first responders. They’re the ones starting off that interaction and having a very significant effect on a call.”
Over the years, says Nicole, she’s seen a fundamental shift in attitude toward mental health issues. “When I started this job, it was very much, ‘You take the call and you move on, you don’t talk about it, you don’t think about it.’ Especially for call takers and dispatchers, the attitude was that if you weren’t there, you didn’t see it, so you don’t have a reason to be affected by it.”
But Nicole recalls one particularly difficult run of calls that deeply troubled both call takers and the officers they dispatched. The police department brought in a psychologist, and Nicole remembers the sense of validation that gave her.
“For the first time, I learned about vicarious traumatization,” she says. “When I started seeing the psychologist, I finally began to unpack what I was feeling and recognize that it’s okay to feel the way I do.”
When Nicole heard about the SFU first responders program from a police officer who had completed it, she immediately knew she had to sign up. “I looked at the program and thought, I need these tools for me, I need them for the people I’m working with.”
She says it was invaluable to take the online courses alongside students from many different professional backgrounds—including paramedics, police, firefighters, social workers, coroners and others.
“People brought such a wide array of experiences, and it opened my eyes to what happens in different fields I hadn’t thought about or considered,” she explains.
Completing the program this year was perfect timing for Nicole, who has now taken on a newly created role at E-Comm as peer support team lead. She laughs that she thought she understood peer support until she began taking the course on it.
“There was so much more to know, and I was just scratching the surface before,” she says. “It’s been so helpful now that I’m in this peer support position to be able to expand what the program looks like, to formalize it and ensure it’s sustainable.”
She’s also developing a peer support manual, which she’d begun as her capstone project at SFU. Nicole’s work still involves training new call agents and dispatchers, which gives her a chance to talk openly about mental health.
“When I started this job, they would say, ‘You may experience trauma.’ Now we say: ‘You will experience trauma in this job and let’s talk about how to deal with that.’
“There’s been such a shift in culture, and I’m really happy to be part of it.”
By Kim Mah