Validation of Trauma-Informed Care Instruments: Emergency Department Environment and Transitional Secondary Environment

Abstract

Background: 

Trauma-informed care is a paradigm of care that requires health care practitioners to understand multiple types of traumas and their effects on the trauma survivor and then incorporate that knowledge into practice. However, there are few psychometrically robust instruments to evaluate trauma-informed care, and none have been applied in the trauma patient setting.

Objective: 

The purpose of this article is to validate two trauma-informed care instruments in the trauma patient setting.

Method: 

Exploratory factor analysis and simultaneous pairwise marginal independence testing procedures were conducted on the “Emergency Department Environment” and the “Transitional Secondary Environment” instruments from September 2020 to November 2020. Descriptive statistics were reported for the content experts participating in the instrument validation.

Result: 

Exploratory data analysis results for each trauma-informed care statement in the tools indicate multidimensionality of trauma-informed care core values, with statistically significant (p < .05) overlap between two or more trauma-informed care core values. After accounting for item interdependence, the associations between the trauma-informed care core values do not appear to be spurious consequences of response interdependence.

Conclusion: 

The two instruments showed high levels of internal consistency supporting the multidimensional models posited by the trauma-informed care framework. The findings will allow for routine monitoring and early detection of gaps in health care provider behaviors in the individualized care of trauma survivors. This will enable identification of trends in trauma care delivery and inform trauma-informed care education for health care providers, ultimately enhancing the healing of trauma survivors.