Student Mental Health Protection Strategy
Posted:
The Paramedic Program is pleased to announce the success of Stage 5 of our student mental health protection strategy - Mandatory Weekly Mental Health Check-Ins. In September 2021, we began a trial of the check-ins with only our second-year student team. After the trial, we consulted with the student group, made some adjustments, and officially launched the program (to both years of paramedic students) in September 2022. This simple and effective program involves all students within the program answering 5 multiple choice questions (2 minutes) on a Microsoft Forms platform. Answers are collected via an Excel spreadsheet which is accessible to the program coordinator. The key feature of the survey is to determine if the student is feeling healthy (green), reacting (yellow), injured (orange), or ill (red). The colours and associated mental health symptoms were adopted directly from the Canadian Forces Mental Health Continuum Model. Once received by the program coordinator, the students responses generated the following reactions:
- Green - No response.
- Yellow - Email check in.
- Orange - In person meeting within 24 hours (when possible).
- Red - Phone call or immediate in person meeting (when possible).
The objective of the check-ins is to provide connection to resources and is not intended to replace personal counselling services. Student are routinely referred to the Student Success Center and/or Crisis Response.
Over the fall semester 2022, we sent out 602 survey with 90% response compliance. This resulted in 45 co-ordinator check-ins, which were primarily email check-ins. Numerous referrals to the Student Success Center were made.
If you would like to learn more about this simple and effective student mental health protection tool, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] or via extension 6357.