The eSCAPe Protocol is a set of interventions which frontline workers can use with people who are anxious, unreasonable, irrational, contemptuous or enraged.
This experiential course offers theoretical knowledge and a chance to practice the skills urgently needed by frontline workers and their supervisors. The course responds to the broader societal need to turn down the interpersonal volatility and intensity fueled by our current national divisions.
The goal is to enable a positive, problem solving interaction between an agitated person and a frontline worker who wants to be helpful. To achieve this goal, frontline workers must create a sense of safety. They can do so so by using the four interventions of the eSCAPe protocol.
The course is taught in five separate modules:
- Brain Basics: How the nervous system reacts under stress
- Self regulation when dealing with activated people
- The four interventions that can calm people down
- Remembering the four interventions
- Practice in groups using observation and role-play
Brain Basics: How the Nervous System Reacts Under Stress
Participants will get a quick overview of what our nervous system does when danger threatens. They will learn that crucial parts of the brain monitor for danger. When these surveillance parts of the brain sense that something dangerous is about to happen, our ability to think, reason and communicate go off line. Instead, we are dominated by survival neural circuits. These survival circuits impel us to fight, run away or freeze. Turning off the survival neural circuits takes way more than logic or sympathy. Instead the frontline worker must communicate to the agitated person’s brain that things are safe again and bring the reasoning, planning and social neural circuits back on line. Participants will have a chance to describe experiences in their workplace with people whose loud, unreasonable, or incoherent demands disrupted their work or the work of co-workers.
Self Regulation When Dealing With an Activated Person
An additional and essential part of eSCAPe training is self regulation which means learning to notice and to modulate one’s own reactivity to agitated people who are angry, panicked, illogical or inarticulate. Participants will practice noticing how their bodies react to certain scenarios and images. Various techniques such as breathing, imaging, changing body positions or briefly looking away,will be taught and practiced. Participates in role play often discover how using the eSCAPe protocol in and of itself lessens reactivity to a disturbing person.
Four Interventions
The eSCAPe Protocol prescribes how to respond to someone operating as if they were in danger. It distills these interactions into four simple interpersonal interactions.
- Social Connection: Let the agitated person know they are understood and that someone wants to help.
- Choice and Control: Give the agitated person some experience of personal agency: Something simple is fine. For example we can offer the opportunity to talk now or later, have a drink of water or a cup of coffee.
- Anticipation: Let the person know what is going to happen next. “When you go to the motor vehicles office, it’s going to be crowded.”
- Planning: As the person calms down, the parts of the brain that can look ahead and decide what to do next can come back on line. The frontline worker can say, “Let’s make a list of the documents you need to take with you to the social security office.”
Remembering the four interventions
eSCAPe’s interventions are simple. The challenge for frontline workers is to remember four interventions and how to use them while they carry out their essential employment tasks. The eSCAPe Protocol uses a time-honored method popular in the medical field. Participants will memorize the meaning of the mnemonic, eSCAPe, and what it stands for. which is “Escape Psychological Trauma.” The four interventions, Social Connection, Choice and Control, Anticipation and Planning, are represented by the middle four letters of eSCAPe. The two lowercase e’s stand for every activated person and every time we have the opportunity to do so.
Practice in Groups Using Observation and Role-Play
Christine and I wish that learning eSCAPe were as simple as reading a book or memorizing a script. Unfortunately, it is not that easy. Effective use of the eSCAPe protocol requires practice. My colleagues and I learned from EMT and paramedic trainees, that even though they memorized, the categories of interventions (social connection, choice and control, anticipation and planning), they needed practice. Additionally, they needed to have the experience of integrating two skills.. This means role-playing the eSCAPe interventions while simultaneously role-playing their regular work assignment. This experiential feature of learning the protocol as if the participants were in their usual work setting is crucial. Scripts of typical eSCAPe interventions help make the cognitive concepts come alive. In role play, Participants take turns being the frontline worker or the agitated person.
eSCAPe Protocol Learning Objectives
- 1
Understand how the perception of danger can impact interpersonal communication and social connection.
- 2
Remember the four interventions that comprise the eSCAPe Protocol.
- 3
Practice eSCAPe interventions using role-play
- 4
Develop the confidence to start using the eSCAPe Protocol.
- 5
Enhance the self-awareness and self-regulation required to manage challenging interactions with difficult people.
