Online Courses

The courses listed below are taught by third-party organizations. Some are CEU-granting, but many are not.

This online course is offered by FEMA, and is for emergency managers and related professionals working with all types of volunteers and coordinating with voluntary agencies. The course provides procedures and tools for building and working with voluntary organizations. Topics include:

Benefits and challenges of using volunteers
Building a volunteer program
Writing job descriptions
Developing volunteers through recruitment, placement, training, supervision and evaluation
Coordinating with voluntary agencies and community-based organizations
Special issues including spontaneous volunteers, liability, and stress.

Nuclear/Radiological Incident Annex

About this course

The National Response Framework (NRF) presents the guiding principles that enable all response partners to prepare for and provide a unified national response to disasters and emergencies from the smallest incident to the largest catastrophe. As part of the NRF, the Incident Annexes describe the concept of operations to address specific contingency or hazard situations or an element of an incident requiring specialized application of the NRF. This course provides an introduction to the Nuclear/Radiological Incident Annex (NRIA) to the NRF.

Course Objectives

At the end of this course, students will be able to:

Describe the overall purpose of the NRIA and the policies that govern its use.
Describe the roles and responsibilities of agencies involved in the management of nuclear/radiological incidents.
Describe the types of incidents for which it would be activated and the concept of operations for a response.

Psychological First Aid: Helping People Cope During Disasters and Public Health Emergencies

About this course

Psychological First Aid in Radiation Disasters

About this course

This online module will present the unique psychological aspects of mass casualty radiation disasters. These require an increased need for psychological first aid knowledge in the response community. Anyone who may respond to a radiation disaster, whether as a professional or as a volunteer must have an understanding of these aspects and how to best address them.

Psychological First Aid in Radiation Disasters increases awareness of the unique psychological consequences of disasters caused by a radiological or nuclear event so that clinical and public health professionals and volunteers will be better prepared to respond radiation emergencies. Following completion of the course, participants will be able to:

Define radiation disasters.
Describe the role of public health and the health community in radiation disasters.
Distinguish the unique psychological effects of radiation disasters.
Define skills and techniques used when performing Psychological First Aid in radiation disasters.

Psychological First Aid in Radiation Disasters is a self-study training that uses interviews conducted with experts involved in the Goiania and Three Mile Island incidents, and video scenarios that allow participants to observe how psychological first aid techniques can be employed in a variety of response settings.