Creating Trauma Informed Health & Hospital Systems
Exposure to traumatic events often impacts an individual’s ability to engage with their healthcare team and meaningfully participate in their care. With estimated exposure rates to traumatic events as high as 70% in most communities, a trauma informed approach to care is imperative for providing safe, high-quality care in a healthcare setting and for supporting the healthcare workforce. The Meadows Institute is here to help healthcare leaders embed policies and processes aligned with trauma informed values across their organizations in a way that is effective, sustainable, and highly impactful for both patients and the workforce.
What Does it Mean for a Health System to be Trauma Informed?
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a healthcare system that is trauma-informed:
- Realizes the widespread impact of trauma
- Recognizes the signs and symptoms of trauma
- Responds by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices, and
- Seeks to actively resist retraumatization
How Can the Meadows Institute Support your Organization?
Integrating their expertise in trauma-informed care, implementation science, and systems-level change management, the Meadows Institute team supports health and hospital systems of all sizes as they aim to embed trauma-informed care across their organizations. No healthcare system is the same, and change that is effective and sustainable must be implemented in a way that recognizes the unique complexities of individual organizations. The Meadows Institute provides individualized implementation support that is tailored to and builds upon the unique strengths and realities of organizations while adhering to national standards and implementation best practices. Available support includes:
- Administration of a thorough organizational assessment, including the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data. Data is analyzed and utilized to better understand the current culture of care within a healthcare system and to identify opportunities for growth as well as the presence of existing TIC values and practices to be leveraged and expanded upon.
- Development of an implementation blueprint and plan for embedding trauma-informed care across a system or within targeted departments in a way that is feasible, strategic, sustainable, aligned with existing system values, and employs best practices for implementation.
- Training and technical assistance to support the activities in the implementation blueprint.
Please contact the Center for Child and Family Wellness for more information on how we can support your organization’s implementation of Trauma-Informed Care
Tegan Henke, MS, MFT
Vice President of Community Systems Innovation, Center for Child and Family Wellness,
Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute