When one thinks of trauma, their first example usually involves a natural disaster or some form of assault in which we often think worst case scenario. However, trauma happens to most people whether they are aware of it or not. For this reason, it is important to treat every patient with empathy and understanding in case they have gone through a traumatic experience in their life. Exposure to trauma can impact multiple qualities of well-being including psychological, physical, spiritual, environmental, and social. An example of this can include a question of faith following a traumatic event. When something awful happens to us, we tend to look to a higher up. Why is this happening to me and what did I do to deserve this? Patients may question a religion they have always followed or their morals in which they assume if a bad thing happens to them then they must have deserved it. This can make them feel worthless and damaged though they may not appear that way on the outside. For this reason, all patients need to feel safe, comforted, and listened to, even after discharge. 

Apart from trauma that can happen in young to late adulthood, patients can also go through adverse childhood experiences that can establish trauma in individuals at a young age that follow them throughout development. Some examples of adverse childhood experiences include physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, emotional abuse as well as many others. Since these occur during a significant developmental period in the child’s life, they can result in significant trauma that follows the child as they grow up and even into adulthood. These long-term effects include depression, anxiety, asthma, and even diabetes. The stress that this trauma puts on patients at a young age can also result in stress induced diseases like hypertension or GI complications. This goes to show that though trauma may not be looked at on a physical level, it can ultimately result in health issues that can put individuals at further risk for medical complications throughout their lives. 

In the future, I hope that I can provide significant empathy to my patients and provide comfort when necessary. In my practice, it is my goal to make my patients feel heard, understood, and comfortable around me as I know how it feels to be in a new setting around new people. It can be extremely terrifying when health professionals are speaking around you like you are not in the room or diminishing your trauma to make you feel like you overreacted. Personally, I hope I never make any of my patient’s feel as if they cannot talk to me or be vulnerable in which I desire that my body language as well as the terminology I use displays that. Overall, trauma informed care will be applied in my practice by using open-ended questions, comforting body language, as well as providing an empathetic environment for all the patient’s I interact with in my career.