Fear of First Aid with Hypnosis

    

    

Doctors newspaper online, 03.10.2019

    

        
        
        

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Bremen

Emergency patients are in an extreme situation. A Bremen emergency doctor relieves hypnosis. That should also relieve pain. In seminars, she passes on her knowledge to rescue teams.

By Helen Hoffmann

The participants of the emergency hypnosis seminar test what they have learned with each other.

© picture alliance / dpa

BREMEN / REGENSBURG. The emergency doctor Annette Held helps with words. With a special hypnosis technique she can calm emergency patients and interrupt pain, she says. "They do not notice them for a short time," explains the 56-year-old. "You can use it to bring broken bones back into the right position." According to the doctor, the technique can also help reduce bleeding or shortness of breath.

"For people with shortness of breath, the more anxiety, the more airless. With hypnosis you can break this cycle, "explains Held, who founded the first German training institute for emergency hypnosis in Bremen in 2015 together with her colleague Thomas Kemmler-Kell. In the seminars, rescue workers learn how to put people into a pleasant trance via speech.

Patients very open

According to Held, patients in emergency situations are particularly responsive to hypnosis. "In an emergency, the psyche creates its own state of trance – you can use it to intervene quickly," she explains. "The success is very good." According to her, most patients are grateful for the offer. "Almost everyone goes along. They do not care what we do, the main thing is the situation in which they are, stops. "

Ambulance Tobias Schmidt recently attended a two-day training seminar in Bremen. "I think it is not a panacea, but another tool for certain situations, for example, in the treatment of pain," says the anesthetist on emergency hypnosis.

In addition to the positive effect on the patients, the 43-year-old hopes to ease his work. "As an emergency doctor, the mission is very challenging. The more possibilities one has of mastering such a situation, the calmer one goes about. "

Comfortable feeling

Stefanie Borchardt, specialist nurse for anesthetics and intensive care, wants to apply her new knowledge in the hospital. "I think that's something patients can benefit from," says the 51-year-old after the weekend in Bremen. She herself enjoyed the exercises. "You notice how well the relaxation does, if you let everything loose."

She describes the state of an emergency hypnosis as a comforting feeling. "It's kind of like when you're dozing, when you can breathe deeply to your feet."

Emeritus Professor Ernil Hansen, who works in hypnosis research and teaching at the University Hospital Regensburg, considers language an extremely important remedy in emergency missions. Patients would then often be very scared, which would adversely affect the immune system. "When someone is scared and upset, blood pressure goes up. That can have dangerous consequences. "

According to him, emergency patients go into a natural trance. "It's a protective mechanism. In a trance, the body has abilities that it does not have otherwise, "explains the 71-year-old.

Criticism comes from Psychologists

Hansen finds the way to accompany emergency patients with therapeutic communication. That emergency services such as paramedics hypnotize people, the anesthetist but believes wrong. Hypnosis should be used as therapy only by psychotherapists and doctors, he claims.

The danger of abuse is great. "Hypnosis is a very sharp sword." In emergency patients, he also saw no need for hypnosis. "The patient is already in a trance. I just have to deal with it. "

The Bremen training institute sees Hansen therefore ambiguous. "The essential thing there will be what I call good, namely, techniques to calm people in an emergency." Techniques of how to initiate or deepen hypnosis are, in the researcher's view, not a two-day training for rescue workers .

The psychologist Teresa Deffner, who works in the intensive care unit with hypnosis in the University Hospital Jena, sees the same thing. It is extremely important that rescue workers know how to use language calmingly and therapeutically. But: hypnosis should be reserved for therapists. Held, on the other hand, says there is no risk in emergency hypnosis if the technique is properly learned.

Fear does not need to have anyone. "They are always self-effective in hypnosis, they can always control what happens, they can just stop." When treating emergency patients, the doctor dispenses with the word hypnosis. "We say we use a soothing technique." (dpa)

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