Spreading Trauma Informed Care Throughout a Hospital System | Patient Centered Care and Trauma Informed Care for Pediatric Patients

Pediatric Medical Traumatic Stress

When speaking of a trauma informed practice, the responsibility for implementation often lands on the individual doctor, nurses, or other healthcare professional. However, for patients and families to truly experience trauma informed medical care, the entire hospital system needs to embrace trauma informed care.

Trauma Informed Health Systems

How does the shift to trauma informed hospital system occur? While each hospital system will need to adapt to their own individual culture, a framework does exist for transitioning to a hospital-wide trauma informed care. In the recently published article “Application of a Framework to Implement Trauma-Informed Care Throughout a Pediatric Health Care Network”, researchers presented a three phase framework for implementing trauma informed care. This framework’s three primary steps include:

Step 1. Prepare for spread (E.g., Meeting with hospital leadership and administration to establish champions)

Step 2. Establish an aim for spread (E.g., Setting goals for the network and identifying critical teams and departments for training)

Step 3. Develop, execute, and refine a spread plan (E.g., Selecting decision-makers)

Using this framework to guide a quality improvement study, researchers showed a change hospital culture, including “significant increases in favorable attitudes about and confidence in delivering TIC. Responses to the open-ended question revealed shifting perceptions of patient situations (e.g., increased empathy) and the need to deliver personalized care (e.g., seeing the patient as a whole person).”

To learn more about how to incorporate trauma informed care at your patient’s bedside, register today for free online continuing education courses and then join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest!

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