Welcome to our site
Founded in 2009. We are a non-profit organization made up of Victim Advocates, Nurses and First Responders that recognize the importance of having a place to re-energize and find balance.
Phone:520 576 7485
Fax:
Email:chuay444@hotmail.com
Chuay Sanctuary- Background
The president of the Chuay Sanctuary is a registered nurse who has spent her 41 year career with the Department of Veterans Affairs in both Long Beach, California and Tucson, Arizona. The last 17 years she has been doing outreach to the American Indian Veterans in Southern Arizona. Concurrently she has been adjunct faculty at the University Of Arizona College Of Nursing. She has taken over 2000 nursing students to the reservations in the past 17 years. During the days she spent with the nursing students, she was struck by how stressed and anxious these young people were with their school challenges and she was also struck by how few tools they seemed to have to work through these issues. So what do these young nurses do when they graduate and get in to the work force where the stressors continue to mount: suffering people, continuous ethical dilemmas, and all the other challenges that nurses face? Where do they learn to take care of themselves? It certainly doesn’t seem to be a focus in school. What if we offered them a ‘healing environment’ during their formative college time, give them an opportunity to see what it feels like to take care of themselves? Would it make any difference to our nursing profession? Would there be less ‘burn out’; healthier attitudes which would be transferred to the patients they care for?
The last 5 ½ years, the nurse has also been volunteering with the Pima County Attorneys’ Office Victim Services Division. After an intense training, these volunteers respond in 2-3 member teams to crime scenes when called out by law enforcement to do ‘crisis intervention’. While the work they do is incredibly rewarding and the volunteer coordinators do an excellent job of checking in with the volunteers after calls, the child deaths, homicides, suicides, home invasions, armed robberies, sexual assault, domestic violence, death notifications etc., can take a toll on even the most seasoned volunteer. The nurse noted the same phenomenon with the volunteers that she noted with the nursing students. Many of them are young (students), they seemed to work way too much (the adrenaline is addictive) but didn’t seem to know how to take care of themselves.
The other group the nurse interacts with is the first responders at the crime scenes. Many of them are Veterans (a large number recently deployed). It was surprising how many of the first responders especially law enforcement, are willing to talk about the calls in great depth, if given any opportunity: they need to unload what they see and feel. Then there are the dispatchers. What about them? What an awesome burden they have chosen to shoulder every day!
What all these people have in common is that they are dedicated to serve. Many of them are young and deciding what is important in their lives. They do shift work, have low staff, many like the adrenaline rush, and taking a break to read, play music, garden, be in a quiet place, work a puzzle, etc., is foreign. Where do we break the cycle of dealing with theses stressors with alcohol, drugs, other ways of ‘medicating’ and cynicism, when the role models for this group, never learned any other way either? The other commonality, is that for any of these people to admit they are having a hard time or need a break is seen as ‘weak’ by many of their peers. For many of them if they admit they need a break their supervisors may feel compelled to ‘pull them off the line’ for numerous reasons.
The Chuay organizers decided to have a physical place where this particular group of people would be welcome to take a break. The non-profit organization was established to offer educational opportunities to learn about self care and a place to relax.
There are a number of body work people that are offering to volunteer their time to administer to this group. There have also been opportunities for networking and socializing. These have all been met with enthusiasm. The goal is not to have large numbers of people, but to have the people that choose to come to Chuay find a safe place to rest.
The organizers do not have any attachment to the outcome of the work done at Chuay. What ever we see as the need for the targeted audience, we will do our best to respond. There are discussions with several law enforcement agencies and fire departments that may want to use Chuay as a place to do counseling for staff.
Presently, Chuay is supported by an anonymous donor and other donations is an approved 501 (3) c charity organization.
