Meet Rick Ottenstein of the Workplace Trauma Center
Aug 24th, 2007 by roberta
It’s time to dedicate a posting to the introduction of Dr. Ottenstein, of the Workplace Trauma Center in Baltimore. Rick is a very special colleague of ours, with a plethora of experience consulting, teaching and providing Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) services, both nationally and internationally. Take a look at Rick’s practice website, to learn more about all of the services that he and his group offers.
Cohen Associates provides CISM services in Texas for Rick’s national network, which stretches from California to New York. We also work with him on international assignments, whenever we can. I had the honor of traveling with Rick to the Middle East this past February, for a Critical Incident assignment, and found it to be a rich, collaborative experience.
One of Rick’s very exciting projects is his Armed Robbery Survival Skills training, which prepares bank employees to negotiate a robbery as safely as possible. The training is quite unique, as it includes role plays and simulations, to help bank tellers and others, to develop the skills to manage their emotional reactions during an robbery. This greatly increases an employee’s ability to function safely under extreme stress and helps to minimize post-traumatic reactions. It’s one thing to know how to behave and another to be prepared to carry it out!
I am one of the clinicians, along with Marcelo Matamoros, LCSW, in Dallas, TX, who works with Rick on providing this training, which we make available across the United States. Rick customizes the training for other industries with high risk of robbery, as needed. I’ll be writing about this training more in future posts.
Recently, I worked with Rick to develop an Industrial Safety and Wellness Training for heavy industry, to lower the incident of accident in manufacturing and processing facilities. We are in the process of developing additional trainings, to address the planning and prevention needs of other industries.
With his wealth of experience, Rick has intriguing and valuable comments to offer, on trauma, human beings and their coping capacities. We’ll see if we can get him to share some of those pearls, as time goes on.