(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)February 20, 2015

MAHWAH, N.J. – A new initiative focusing on late-onset Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD), involving a partnership between the Jewish Family Service (JFS) of North Jersey, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Nursing program of Ramapo College, began with an orientation for ten student nurses on February 6. Accompanying the group were Dr. Kathleen M. Burke, Assistant Dean of Nursing Program (below with Alice Blass, left, and Leah Kaufman, right, of JFS), and Dr. Donna Flynn, Assistant Professor of Nursing.

This collaboration trains 4th-year nursing students on how to deal with the special needs of Holocaust survivors who sometimes exhibit symptoms of late-onset PTSD. The students work with experienced social workers to recognize, understand, and deal with the phenomenon in a caring and effective manner. Feedback from all parties has been extremely positive, and it is envisaged that the program will go forward on a yearly (instead of a semester) basis.

Although in this instance the result of the particular circumstances of persecution, imprisonment in concentration camps, escape, hiding, and/or the loss of loved ones associated with Hitler’s war against the Jews, late-onset PTSD is an affliction that is also experienced by the survivors of other genocides, wars, civil turmoil, sexual abuse, and other forms of human distress. It is something that medical professionals, social workers and others in the caring professions often face, and for which they are usually not wholly prepared. It is hoped that the skills and experience the students gain by participating in the project will be transferable to other situations and groups they will encounter throughout their professional lives.

The February 6 orientation was held at the offices of Jewish Family Service of Northern Jersey in Wayne for an initial cohort of ten students. They first watched and engaged in a conversation about Night and Fog, the 1955 groundbreaking Holocaust documentary by Alain Resnais. Center Director Dr. Michael A. Riff introduced the film and led the discussion. He stressed to students that they would encounter survivors with various experiences of the Holocaust. While some will certainly have been in concentration and labor camps, others managed to survive in hiding, often as children, or had found refuge outside Nazi-occupied territory.

Sally Whitmore (with Melanie Lester, right), a survivor of the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz, next related her experiences of living through the Holocaust and its aftermath. Her considered and frank presentation made it clear to students that they would meet with clients and patients with a wide variety of past experience and present needs. Culminating the orientation was a presentation outlining the special needs of Holocaust survivors by Melanie Lester, LSW, Community Outreach Coordinator of the JFS of North Jersey, and Leah Kaufman, LCSW, the agency’s Executive Director. Ms. Lester also reviewed with students the assessment tools that they will use in their evaluation interviews with survivor clients.

Along with other changes in delivery of health care currently taking place, nursing is moving into the community. This shift requires an interdisciplinary focus and a broad knowledge of the populations being served. Comprising JFS social workers and Ramapo student nurses, the interdisciplinary team being formed to serve Holocaust survivors is a cutting edge example of this trend. According to Dr. Kathleen Burke, the orientation helped student team members gain an insight into the particular needs prospective clients/patients than they otherwise would not have easily obtained. She stressed that Dr. Riff and Mrs. Whitmore in providing, respectively, the historical and first-hand dimensions played a key role in this effort.

It is hoped that this collaboration will evolve into a larger project that will also bring nursing students together with colleagues in Ramapo College’s History program to train and supervise public high school students in conducting structured interviews with Holocaust survivors possibly leading to a video/oral history end product. Not only would both the high school and college students involved in the project learn first-hand about the Holocaust, develop their critical thinking skills and help transmit survivors’ experiences to future generations, but they would also develop their capacity for compassion and empathy in interacting with the elderly and people different from themselves.

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