Trauma-informed principles in physiotherapy and rehabilitation

Trauma is common and may lead to significant and long-lasting negative impacts on people’s health. Trauma- informed practice does not treat trauma but uses a strengths-based approach to encourage engagement in services and limit re-traumatisation. Trauma-informed practice is guided by the core principles of safety, trust, choice, collaboration and empowerment for both healthcare users and clinicians. Due to increasing awareness of the prevalence and impact of trauma (or overwhelm) and its effects on health outcomes, and engagement in healthcare, there is wide support for incorporating trauma-informed principles into care. This seminar discussed the findings from two qualitative studies, one in physiotherapy and another in a multidisciplinary rehabilitation setting, covering how trauma-informed principles are attended to (or not) and some of the barriers and enablers to how trauma-informed principles may be conceptualised and operationalised. The healthcare consumers interviewed in these studies covered a range of ages but the majority of them were older adults.

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About the presenter

Dr Sophie Heywood

Dr Sophie Heywood, Physiotherapy Department, St Vincent’s Hospital is a clinician researcher and an APA Sports and Exercise physiotherapist and works at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, the Melbourne Sports Medicine Centre and Hydro Functional Fitness. She has an honorary appointment to the School of Physiotherapy at the University of Melbourne and is on the advisory board of the Centre for Health, Exercise and Sports Medicine. Sophie’s PhD focussed on biomechanics and exercise in older adults and in people with knee osteoarthritis. Her current research project is exploring training in trauma-informed principles with a wide range of collaborators including those from St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne and the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.