Our Whole Health Series features a variety of personal enrichment courses that focus on the integration of physical, mental, and spiritual health.

Trauma Informed Care

A vastly under-recognized area of health care is the role trauma plays in people's relationship to their providers. Potentially treatable patients can fall through the cracks because they do not trust their practitioners to know how to work with the histories of suffering that continue to live in their bodies. People frequently avoid seeking all types of health care, many times until it is too late, due to past trauma and a fear of not being heard or being re-traumatized.

Providing trauma-informed care is essential in creating an environment where patients will continue seeking the care they need rather than not returning until their condition or situation becomes significantly more serious. This course will help health professionals understand what trauma is and how it affects people; identify the signs and symptoms of trauma; know how to respond to trauma in a patient and themselves; use core principles of care to avoid retraumatizing a patient. Course participants will engage in exercises in understanding how trauma may have impacted their own life, how they may be responding to the trauma their patients have experienced, and what to do during patient care to avoid retraumatizing the patient or the practitioner, and how to engage in self-care to help avoid compassion fatigue or burn-out.