192 pages · 2026
Trauma Informed Care
A Guide for Nursing and Midwifery Practice
By Sophie Isobel
- Published
- January 22, 2026
- Imprint
- Routledge
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- ISBN
- 9781003530770
Overview
About this book
This practical guide introduces and critically examines the concept of trauma informed care, exploring how it can be implemented in everyday nursing and midwifery practice across a range of settings. Supporting nurses and midwives to integrate trauma informed knowledge and practice into their work, this comprehensive book begins with an overview of what trauma means. It looks at theories of trauma and the neuroscience of trauma and memory. It discusses the diagnostics of trauma and considers how trauma impacts relationships (including those within healthcare settings), and health, illness, and recovery. It also investigates how trauma can affect people differently across the lifespan and contexts.
The second part of the book builds on the first, focusing on how an understanding of trauma can inform nursing and midwifery practice across settings. It looks at promoting safety in interpersonal relationships, navigating interventions, talking about trauma, responding after potentially traumatic events, and responding to trauma, self-care, and systemic challenges. This book provides essential knowledge around trauma informed care relevant to nurses and midwives, and uses a range of approaches to help readers transfer learning to their own practice.
It is an essential guide for nurses and midwives in practice and in training across the full range of practice settings.
Subjects
Behavioral Sciences, Health and Social Care
Inside the book
Table of contents
Select a chapter to read its abstract.
ChapterIntroduction
Pages: 4
The introduction introduces the book and its contents. It establishes a definition of trauma and overviews the links of trauma to nursing and midwifery practice. The content and approach of the book are introduced and the two parts of the book based on theory and practice are justified.
Part IThe Theory
Pages: 72
No chapter abstract available.
Chapter 1What is trauma?
Pages: 11
This chapter defines trauma, introducing the links between potentially traumatic events and their effects, the ways trauma is categorised and described, and the experiences of events, including those during childhood.
Chapter 2How trauma affects people
Pages: 12
This chapter overviews some of the ways that trauma affects people, with a view to highlighting that trauma can impact differently across the lifespan or depending on context and affect relationships, understanding of self and shame.
Chapter 3The impact of trauma on the brain and body
Pages: 8
This chapter overviews some of the ways trauma may alter neurobiological functioning and explores the relationship of trauma to experiences of physical and mental illness, exploring how adverse events shape long-term health outcomes.
Chapter 4Trauma as a memory
Pages: 9
This chapter explores the relationship of trauma to memory. This includes how events or experiences from the past can intrude upon the present due to the way the memories are stored. Dissociation and repressed memories are discussed, along with an overview of how trauma memories can be ‘triggered’.
Chapter 5Trauma diagnoses, treatment, and recovery
Pages: 11
This chapter describes common trauma diagnoses, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. These diagnoses do not capture everybody's experience of trauma, but they are helpful for understanding what can make trauma a ‘disorder’. The diagnostic criteria for each are discussed along with treatment approaches, as well as broader understandings of what recovery from trauma looks like.
Chapter 6The politics of trauma
Pages: 10
Trauma occurs in the context of factors which enable trauma, create trauma, or perpetuate trauma. This chapter introduces the context of trauma at social and political levels. This includes exploring common critiques and limitations of understandings of trauma.
Chapter 7What is trauma informed care?
Pages: 9
This chapter introduces the concept of trauma informed care, overviewing some of the history of the approach, offering a definition, and exploring the importance of envisioning a shared goal. In addition, the outcomes of implementing trauma informed care are discussed.
Part IIThe Practice
Pages: 104
No chapter abstract available.
Chapter 8Applying the principles of trauma informed care to practice
Pages: 10
This chapter introduces what trauma informed care (TIC) means in practice and explores each of the principles. The outcomes of TIC are also overviewed, with a focus on the need to identify points of measure that are sensitive to contexts.
Chapter 9Being trauma informed in interactions
Pages: 17
This chapter focuses on individual practice and what it means to be trauma informed within nursing and midwifery interactions with patients. How to enhance a felt sense of safety within healthcare interactions, through interpersonal neurobiology and understandings of polyvagal theory, is explored, with a focus on minimising shame.
Chapter 10Trauma informed interventions
Pages: 10
This chapter considers the application of trauma informed care to specific nursing and midwifery interventions, with a focus on how nurses can prioritise safety and minimise harm occurring while still attending to necessary tasks.
Chapter 11Conversations about trauma
Pages: 13
This chapter explores conversations about trauma, including how nurses and midwives may screen for trauma in healthcare settings, responding to disclosures and supporting safe conversations about trauma.
Chapter 12Lifespan considerations for trauma informed practice
Pages: 14
This chapter links the unique impacts of trauma at stages of the lifespan to nursing and midwifery considerations. The chapter reflects on unique considerations for trauma informed care across perinatal, infant, child, youth, adult, and older people's care.
Chapter 13Supporting after potentially traumatic events
Pages: 9
This chapter explores how nurses and midwives respond to people after potentially traumatic events, including debriefing after traumatic events which occur in the clinical context.
Chapter 14Vicarious trauma and radicalising self-care
Pages: 9
This chapter considers the various ways trauma can impact nurses and midwives, highlighting the importance of recognising and addressing these effects. This includes an in-depth consideration of vicarious trauma. The chapter also explores self-care, introducing ideas of radicalising traditional understandings of self-care as part of being trauma informed.
Chapter 15Considerations for trauma informed care implementation
Pages: 11
This chapter aims to provide nurses and midwives with practical guidance on integrating trauma-informed principles into practice, at individual, team, and organisational levels. The chapter provides reflective lists to support the process of implementation, including being trauma informed in individual practice, trauma informed intake to services, team or service level approaches, noticing trauma in the clinical context, self-reflection in trauma informed practice, and trauma informed telehealth.
Chapter 16Moving forward with trauma informed care
Pages: 9
This chapter concludes the book by considering how to progress Trauma Informed Care. This includes the need for Trauma and Violence Informed Care, how to respond to resistance, and how to sustain motivation and drive. The limitations and possibilities of trauma informed care are explored.