Dr Lene Lauge Berring is a Mental Health Nurse. She is the head of Psychiatric Research Unit in the Mental Health Services in Region Zealand in Denmark, and associate professor at the University of Southern Denmark. She has a strong interest in how mental health organisations can support the development of environments that serve as a sanctuaries for people who receive psychiatric care. This includes de-escalation practices, practical training programs, and organisational change toward proactive and positive prevention based on a public health perspective and trauma-informed health care delivery models.
At Horatio, she will talk about Trauma Informed Care (TIC). TIC is important as research shows that a TIC working environment might have the potential to increase staff satisfaction in health care settings as this approach actively strive to resist re-traumatization by enhancing safety and promoting empowerment in organisations. Trauma-informed organisations that use a trauma-sensitive practice can decrease trauma-related triggers and improve staff health, resiliency, and efficiency while enhancing the quality of care for patients and families. TIC can also benefit health care professionals with a personal history of trauma or who have experienced work-related trauma.
TIC includes cultural changes where organization’s shift focus from: “What is wrong with you?” to “What has happened to you?” and acknowledges that health care organizations and care teams need to have a complete picture of a patient’s life situation — past and present — to provide effective health care services with a healing orientation.
In Europe, only a few mental health care settings have implemented TIC, though TIC is widely used in mental health care settings across the US, Australia, and New Zealand.
The keynote will focus on benefits of providing TIC, and how European health organisations can adopt/implement this approach. She will dive into core elements of TIC such as the four R’s: Realize the widespread impact of trauma and understand paths for recovery; Recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma in patients, families, and staff; Respond to, by integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices; and actively avoid re-traumatization.
Furthermore, she will provide examples of how small changes in everyday practices support organisations in becoming trauma informed and how health care providers can help patients to address trauma and recover from previous traumatic experiences.