While most people have experienced some form of psychological trauma at some point in their life, severe psychological trauma is particularly common in people who are socially excluded (i.e., through homelessness, addiction, poverty, incarceration and/or belonging to minority ethnic groups). Accessing healthcare in hospitals for those with complex psychological trauma histories can often be triggering, resulting in challenging interactions between patients and staff, and placing patients at increased risk of avoidable patient safety events and poorer health outcomes. In collaboration with St. James’s Hospital, we are currently working together with patient groups and hospital staff to develop a new training method, called TS4TIC, to promote the use of trauma informed care within acute and emergency hospital settings. To maximise the reach and impact of TS4TIC, we will take what we have learned from its development within emergency hospital settings and apply this knowledge towards the development of easy-to-use third-level educational training tools, for use across other health professions including, for example, nursing, dentistry and pharmacy.
These easy-to-use tools include the use of personas, or fictitious character profiles, whose experiences, emotions, and perspectives are depicted across a patient journey, as the pathway an individual might experience in deciding when, where, and how to access health care, and what happens to that individual once they make contact with a healthcare provider. These educational tools will be developed, refined, and finalised together with students, educators and experts by experience, within a non-judgmental learning environment, and in the form of a series of workshops, to ensure that the personas, patient journeys, and training tools are acceptable and accessible to students and educators alike.