Trauma-informed care within residential aged care settings: A systematic scoping review

The importance of trauma-informed care (TIC) within residential aged care (RAC) settings has been increasingly recognised. TIC would ensure that older people who have experienced trauma over their lifetime have their needs better understood and accommodated. This scoping review examined the extent to which TIC has been applied within RAC settings.

A scoping review was conducted according to Cochrane recommendations and the PRISMA-ScR checklist. A systematic search of six databases (Embase, Emcare, CENTRAL, CINAHL, PsychInfo and Medline) was performed in July 2022 and March 2023 and peer-reviewed primary research, in English and involved RAC staff or residents (aged 65 years and over) providing or receiving TIC were eligible for inclusion. Studies focused on trauma intervention, assessment, screening, or treatment were excluded. Thematic synthesis was performed to extract themes relating to trauma-informed practice, barriers and enablers to TIC, and outcomes from the application of TIC approaches.

Five articles were included. There was little evidence of the implementation of TIC interventions in RAC settings. Only one study examined the application of a TIC framework in a RAC setting. However, there was some evidence that approaches that consider resident's experience of trauma have emerged from practice experience and been used in RAC as an extension of person-centred care.

Whilst trauma-informed approaches to resident care are emerging through practice experience, and despite policy recommendations to do so, there is little evidence that formal TIC interventions or frameworks have been applied to RAC internationally. This study highlights a gap in research and practice and makes several recommendations for further research and implementation of TIC in RAC.