The Trauma-Informed Care Teaching Aid Toolkit (TICTAT)

Abstract

Trauma-informed care (TIC) takes the knowledge that trauma is common and could affect anyone who accesses health care services, and applies that to general principles that can be applied to any care discipline. TIC has been used in homeless services, education, prisons and social work to great effect: trauma-informed services see lower patient and client distress, better work-life balance, and lower rate of assaults (Blair et al., 2017; Brown et al., 2022; Dorado et al., 2016; Elwyn et al., 2015). There are many different structures of TIC, but the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA, 2014) has a list of six principles that are often used to scaffold both the understanding and application of TIC: safety; trustworthiness & transparency; peer support; collaboration & mutuality; voice, choice & empowerment; and sensitivity towards cultural, gender and historical issues. These principles all aim to reduce the retraumatisation of patients while they are accessing the service by keeping them within their windows of tolerance as much as possible.