BWH Division of Women's Health
Department of Medicine

Division of Women's Health

OUR PROGRAMS:

Brigham and Women’s Hospital: Trauma-Informed Care Learning Collaborative (TIC Learning Collaborative)

In 2012, with the support of senior administration at MGB (formerly Partners Healthcare), the BWH TIC Collaborative (formerly Trauma-Informed Care Initiative) was founded. The initiative is comprised of leadership and clinical staff from trauma-related services across our enterprise working collaboratively to build capacity at each hospital in the pursuit of health equity. Trauma-Informed Care is an evidenced-based theoretical framework that promotes health equity and staff wellness. The aims of the initiative include:

 

    1. Providing staff with trauma-informed care education
    2. Building capacity at each MGB hospital to advance TIC through collaboration
    3. Identifying opportunities for federal, foundation and internal funding
    4. Offering technical assistance to advance trauma-informed care nationally for medical institutions that provide adult medicine
    5. Develop metrics to understand the added contributions of trauma-informed practices


What Is Trauma-Informed Care?

 

In 1994, SAMHSA convened the Dare to Vision Conference. This event was intentionally designed to bring trauma to the foreground and was the first national conference in which women trauma survivors talked about their experiences and ways in which standard practices in hospitals re-traumatized, and often triggered, memories of previous abuse. The six core principles of Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) are: Safety| Trustworthiness and Transparency| Peer Support| Collaboration and Mutuality| Empowerment, Voice and Choice| Cultural, Historical, and Gender Acknowledgement. These principles are grounded in evidence and that evidence offers members of healthcare teams and patients’ ways to engage in more meaningful encounters.

 

Six Core Principles of Trauma-Informed Care

 

  • Safety
  • Trustworthiness & Transparency
  • Peer Support
  • Collaboration & Mutuality
  • Empowerment, Voice & Choice
  • Cultural, Historical & Gender Acknowledgement
Our Team

Annie Lewis-O’Connor, PhD, NP-BC, MPH, FAAN

Eve Rittenberg, MD

Nomi Levy-Carrick, MD, MPHIL

Archana Basu, PhD (MGH)

Patient Care

CARE Clinic

Resources

Trauma-Informed Care Resources
Media
Literature
Selected Publications

TIC Learning Collaborative

TIC Learning Collaborative is focused on creating a space to share and learn with clinicians, researchers, leaders, and staff. We aspire to:

  1. Give those interested in TIC tangible, useful materials that help all those interacting with patients feel more confident, supported, educated and at ease when implementing TIC.
  2. Discover new ways and modalities to educate on TIC.
  3. Find ways to work together and across hospitals within MGB so that TIC education efforts are done in tandem, with cross sector support, in an interdisciplinary and collaborative manner.
  4. Use a TIC approach to work together to achieve these goals, using the 6 principles of SAMHSA TIC as a guide for our work together (ie- trustworthy and transparent, decreased power differentials, peer support, empowering each other, understanding roles of culture, history and gender in creation of materials, actively seeking to ensure that we create a learning collaborative that fosters partnerships.
  5. Explicitly bring a social and racial justice lens into the ways we provide materials, teach, advocate, conduct research and implement our goals.


In our efforts together we welcome opportunities to:

 

  1. Develop metrics that measure the added benefits of trauma-informed care approaches.
  2. Identify extramural and internal grants.
  3. Work collaboratively to respond to request for proposals offering support in proposal development.

Research Program of the Division of Women’s Health

Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

75 Francis Street, Boston MA 02115