Trauma-informed primary care: from evidence to practice: Workshop 8F.1

A trauma-informed approach in healthcare starts from the assumption that every patient and member of staff may have been affected by trauma. It is an organisational change intervention that incorporates knowledge about universal prevalence and impacts of trauma into policies and practices, creates safe environments and relationships, and promotes physical and emotional safety for all patients and staff. By providing services in a trauma-informed manner, it aims to prevent re-traumatisation of patients and staff and improve experiences and outcomes for all. Many policies and guidelines recommend implementing such approaches across healthcare organisations and systems. We will summarise research evidence for the effectiveness and acceptability of trauma-informed organisational interventions in primary care and provide two cases of implementation in the context of Australian and UK primary care. The Australian case will share examples from the Safer Families Readiness Program of how practices have chosen to change to improve responses to trauma. The UK case will share examples of how all GPs and practices can adopt more trauma-informed approaches and how one practice improved trauma-informed access within current budgets. Facilitated by primary care researchers and an expert by experience, participants will explore how applicable these examples are to their own organisations.
This workshop is aimed at commissioners, managers, practitioners, researchers, people with lived experience who are interested in implementing trauma-informed approaches in primary care.