Chapter 12: Trauma-informed Health Professional Education (TI-HPE): A Conceptual Model

Hospitals are key learning environments for post-graduate medicine and nursing students in Australia. While universities are increasingly addressing diverse learner needs, those in high-stress hospital settings are often overlooked. These learners face long hours, emotionally intense clinical situations, and outdated teaching practices, placing them at risk of vicarious trauma. Although trauma-informed care aims to improve patient outcomes, it has not adequately addressed learner well-being. Hospitals adopting trauma-informed frameworks must consider the needs of health professional learners alongside those of patients and staff.

The principles of trauma-informed care have been applied to educational settings to create a capability model that fosters safe, supportive learning environments in which students can thrive. The benefits of trauma-informed education are well documented in primary and secondary education and are becoming established at the tertiary education level. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the pressing need for a trauma-informed approach in hospitals where educators, learners, and patients come together in an environment where the risk of traumatisation is high; and to explore how trauma-informed educational principles can be applied to this complex learning environment. In the conceptual model presented in this chapter, the following elements are proposed as being essential to trauma-informed health professional education (TI-HPE) in the hospital context: identity safety; trauma awareness and shame sensitivity; and active inclusion (Carello & Butler, 2014; Vick et al., 2024).