Graduate Certificate in Trauma-Awareness and Resilience in Healthcare Settings

This course will introduce the core concepts of adverse experiences, toxic stress, trauma, restoration, self-care, and resilience in the healthcare setting and provide a research-based, strength-based approach to creating a trauma-informed, resilience-fostering healthcare setting.  

This course will provide a foundational understanding of the neurobiology of the human stress response.  Students will gain a knowledge of neuroscience as it applies to medical, emotional, and psychosocial stress, resilience, and the cultivation of well-being. Various heuristics of the brain and central nervous system will be presented and explored including the Neurosequential Model and Polyvagal Theory. Finally, the course will present the frame of Interpersonal Neurobiology as an integrative method of applying neurobiological principles in the field. 

This course will introduce students to the core concepts of self-care in order to provide a
research-based, strengths-based approach to creating trauma-informed and resilience-fostering environments. Students will gain an understanding and awareness of burnout, compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress and vicarious trauma for trauma-responsive professionals. Risk and protective factors as well as symptoms will be explored. The course is also designed to familiarize students with contemplative practices, its relevance for the field of wellness, and to give professionals methods for taking care of themselves and preventing burnout. Applying course concepts, students will gain hands-on practice examining and applying the use of a variety of self-care assessments. Assignments will emphasize the ethical, legal, multicultural, and spiritual implications for wellness and self-care, including personal, professional, and organizational elements. As a final project, students will develop an individual self-care plan to address personal and professional risk factors and mitigate the impact of stress by enhancing protective factors that support ongoing wellness.

This course prepares workers in all genres of healthcare to deal with the experience of traumatic events. This can profoundly influence their client's health and well-being and response to care. The healthcare worker may be unaware of the specific traumatic events impacting each client in the clinical setting and may, without knowledge and discernment, exacerbate the impacts of trauma. Traumatic events may cause a client to respond to therapy and care in ways that are more destructive than healing. When the healthcare worker is well trained to identify signs of trauma, they can initiate a care plan that provides tools for resilience. This course will provide strategies to intervene in trauma-informed and restorative ways for healthcare providers, co-workers, and clients. Organizational environments that offer healing and restoration will be explored. 

This course will examine current research-based evidence on trauma, risk, resiliency, and protective factors. Course material will be drawn from research focusing on both healthcare providers and potential clients. Course participants will review the literature addressing the needs of multiple populations and strategies to build resilience in healthcare providers, co-workers, and clients.