Trauma-exposed professionals are highly trained individuals working in both military and public safety roles that include, but are not limited to, first responders, dispatchers, search and rescue specialists and others. The nature of trauma-exposed professional work necessitates ongoing, repeated, and serial exposures to traumatic events where individuals perform their duties according to current best practices and guidelines in their chosen professions (e.g., military, police, firefighter, paramedic etc.).

Despite having extensive and intensely focused training in many facets of the job, one area that trauma-exposed professionals do not tend to receive adequate training in is in recognizing, managing, and addressing the common and predictable effects of exposure to traumatic events. The Trauma Resiliency Training (TRT) program, developed at the University of Victoria, fills this gap in professional training for trauma exposed workers and organizations.

The Foundations of TRT

The amount of information available on trauma and its effects is overwhelming. The TRT has been designed, piloted and tested to provide the most relevant information to trauma-exposed professionals and organizations so that non-mental health professionals can understand what is being taught quickly and apply it instantly to their personal experiences as a trauma-exposed professional.

The Foundations of the TRT are:

The TRT curriculum speaks to the lived experiences of trauma-exposed professionals in a way that participants recognize how the work they do impacts them in small and large ways. Participants learn that traumatization is not an inevitable consequence of exposure to trauma, but rather an ongoing risk of the job that, when managed, reduces the likelihood one will be injured. Participants learn the basic skills of trauma management to begin using immediately.