Trauma-Informed Care Is the Best Clinical Practice in Rehabilitation Nursing

This clinical article explores how trauma-informed care (TIC) can be used by rehabilitation nurses with patients who have experienced pervasive adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

This clinical article gives suggestions for using the five guiding principles of TIC: safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment, as the best clinical practice.

Implementing TIC promotes successful rehabilitation, improves patient outcomes, and reduces costs. For every $1 spent on TIC, $5 is saved in lifetime costs.

ACEs cause physiological changes in the brain, leading to antisocial and risky behaviors, which may result in head injuries, spinal cord injuries, amputations, and multiple traumas with subsequent rehabilitation admissions, as well as obesity, and chronic illnesses. TIC is a cultural shift: We as providers must ask ourselves "What happened to this person?" instead of "What is wrong with this person?" Nurses are beginning to develop our literature and practice of TIC.