The presentation educating us about trauma informed care was very interesting and informative. We spoke about adverse childhood experiences, also known as ACE’s and learned they can have long term impacts on the lives of these children. ACE’s include abuse (psychological, physical and emotional), as well as divorse and neglect. Trauma is similar but is more of an immediate event that may occur just once but causes instant stress on the body afterwards. Experiencing trauma can result differently depending on the person. For those who experience trauma and go home to a support system or loving household will likely recover better. The issues arise more commonly in those who go through a traumatic event and also may be experiencing abuse at home or neglect from their family. Experiencing these events at a young age can lead to heart disease, diabetes, depression and earlier death. 

Knowing this information and the trauma informed care principles, I feel that I can more thoroughly understand and get to know my patients as a nurse. Being more comfortable with the topic helps me to more easily bring up the topic to patients and make them feel comfortable in responding. This topic is one that may be difficult to approach with our clients if we are not informed of the topic and building trust with our patients. When we assess our patients, sometimes hearing about who they are and where they come from is more important than the numbers for vital signs. Rather than jumping to judgement, we should step back and ask ourselves “what’s happened to them?”. When we determine this, we can better understand why our patient may be going through what they are. Learning about their childhood can guide us in caring for them and what resources to provide. Also, we want to be sensitive when asking about trauma or childhood events and be respectful if they do not want to answer the questions.