Trauma-informed care in the emergency department: concepts and recommendations for integrating practices into emergency medicine

ABSTRACT

The experience of psychological trauma is common and has become even more prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic for both health care workers and the general population [1–3]. Traumatic experiences can have varied and lasting physical and mental health effects on patients, beyond what we are privy to in the acute environment of the emergency department. The effects of these prior traumatic experiences can be exacerbated by interaction with the healthcare system, and yet emergency medicine physicians have no standardized methods for working with patients in a trauma-informed way. The systematic implementation of trauma-informed care (TIC) practice requires the cooperation of multiple domains within the health care system, including focus on the physical environment, direct care, and administrative practices. Here we provide recommendations specific to emergency medicine for the development and implementation of TIC in the regular patient-clinician interaction, situated within the context of the TIC framework as outlined by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) [4].

KEYWORDS:

• Trauma-informed care
• emergency medicine
• psychological trauma
• medical trauma
• patient-centered care

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Correction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10872981.2023.2206681).

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Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.