Creating Safe Scenes is a free, Commission on Accreditation for Pre-Hospital Continuing Education (CAPCE)- accredited, online training course that helps first responders—police, fire, and emergency medical services—work with individuals experiencing a mental health and/or substance use crisis.

This course is designed to help first responders understand more about mental health, mental illness, and substance use disorders so they can better assess risks and apply the safest strategies for taking care of themselves and the individuals they are called to serve.

Creating Safe Scenes—which includes first-hand video accounts from responders and mental health consumers, quizzes, resources, and a final exam—will help first responders:

• Understand how individuals come to experience a behavioral health crisis
• Understand how best to make a safe connection with an individual experiencing a crisis
• Learn about de-escalation strategies for working with people in crisis
• Learn strategies for developing community networks and referral resources
• Understand how to improve the safety of both the responder and the individual in crisis

Take the Course

Sign in and start the course. Participants are eligible to receive 1.5 continuing education unit (CEU) credits from the Commission on Accreditation for Pre-Hospital Continuing Education (CAPCE) after successfully completing this course.

For additional trainings, including those specifically designed for first responders, visit the Online DTAC Training Courses web page.

Learn More About CAPCE CEU's

Creating Safe Scenes is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation For Pre-Hospital Continuing Education (CAPCE) for 1.5 credit hours.

Course Reviewer

KENDALL K. HALL (M.D., St. Louis University School of Medicine, and M.S., Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety, Northwestern University) is a Managing Director at IMPAQ, International and serves as an internal subject matter expert in patient safety and healthcare quality improvement. She leads the work of IMPAQ’s Quality Improvement and Patient Safety content area and serves as Project Director and Senior Advisor on related projects. She serves as Project Director for the National Content Developer for the CMS Partnership for Patients initiative which aims to reduce all-cause patient harm and reduce readmissions for hospitalized patients. She also serves as a senior technical advisor on the CMS Strategic Innovations Engine and the AHRQ TeamSTEPPS programs. Dr. Hall also served as a Medical Officer in the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Dr. Hall is board certified in Emergency Medicine and is licensed to practice medicine in Maryland.

Contact

For questions about the online course, or all other disaster technical assistance inquires contact SAMHSA DTAC at 800-308-3515 or dtac@samhsa.gov.