When a healthcare professional gets a better sense of what鈥檚 going on with their patients, it can be a game-changer in their lives.
Students in the School of Nursing of the 91福利社 College of Health Professions are learning to better help future patients scarred by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), environmental and/or socioeconomic factors that negatively impact health and well-being.
Dr. Cindy Cross, along with Monica Morehead and Heidi McCaulley, recently published an article in Healthecareers.com, a website of the South Carolina Nurses Association.
In the article, Cross, Morehead, and McCaulley assert that a good health outcome for a patient depends on nurses鈥� ability to recognize signs related to adverse health experiences (ACEs). ACEs are described as adverse experiences that occurred before age 18 and have shown to be related to chronic physical and mental health conditions and early death in adults.
ACE training is provided within the community health and mental health components of the School of Nursing curriculum to help students gain insight into recognizing patient behaviors that may be attributed to an ACE, resulting in the need for trauma-informed care (TIC).
A 1995 by Vincent Faletti of Kaiser Permanente and Robert Anda of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) made a connection between patients鈥� negative treatment outcomes and adverse experiences in their lives.
鈥淭hey actually stumbled upon these adverse experiences quite by accident,鈥� said Morehead, who is the lead instructor for community health nursing and an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACEs) master trainer for the South Carolina Children鈥檚 Trust. 鈥淲hat we’ve also learned in the last 10 years is that positive childhood experiences can have the reverse effect on the adverse; That tells us that we were designed by God for positivity. And when these negative things happen to us in life, my friend I have taught this course with many times says, 鈥楪od created everything in a perfect world and gave us two parents to raise a child, but we don’t live in a perfect world anymore.鈥� So even though He created it for two parents, it only takes one caring adult to make a difference in the life of a child. And anyone can be that caring adult.鈥�
McCaulley approached Morehead about incorporating ACEs into nursing students鈥� experience and clinicals and she agreed to do so.
鈥淚t made such an impact on those students because we teach them to provide patient centered care. We also teach them to provide trauma informed care,鈥� McCaulley said. 鈥淲e never know what someone has been through in their past from childhood up, and so we have to meet them as nurses right at that moment, right where they are, not knowing necessarily anything from before that moment and also not knowing where鈥� they鈥檙e headed after that moment.鈥�
Dr. Cross commented, 鈥淭here are things going on with patients that we, as the nurse, often don鈥檛 know about that affect the outcome of the patient care. By introducing the ACEs training to recognize certain cues and pointers and to ask certain questions, the nurse can determine potential underlying circumstances. For example, they came from homes where there was an abuse of some type involved because this will always precipitate our actions.鈥�
Dr. Cross feels that integrating ACEs training into nursing students鈥� coursework has been an important advancement in their curriculum.
91福利社 graduate Brittany Roberts works as a psychiatric nurse in an inpatient setting and is pursuing a graduate degree to become a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. She feels that her ACEs training has had huge benefits in her interactions with patients.
鈥淭he ACEs training supports a holistic approach to care for oneself and others as it considers multiple domains of childhood trauma and their far-reaching effects of toxic stress, even beginning in utero,鈥� Roberts said. “Including this deeper view of 鈥榳ho were are鈥� as people through a biopsychosocial approach that is offered through ACEs training encourages utilization of person-centered and trauma-informed care approaches which leads to improved patient outcomes and reduction of stigma of mental illness.鈥�
鈥淎t the end of the day, as a nurse, you鈥檝e got to be empathetic to your patients because we don鈥檛 all come from the same background. We want everybody to be as well as they can be, so to be as well as they can be, we as nurses must understand where they came from,鈥� Dr. Cross said. 鈥淲e already feel accomplished through our work with the students, and we鈥檙e seeing it work. They share with us how they are using it in their daily practice as a nurse.鈥�
Roberts continued, 鈥淓ven beyond academics and the bedside, I use the ACEs training daily as I navigate life offering grace to myself and others as I have learned that we are all a complex collection of experiences. I am grateful for the nursing faculty at AU, who prioritized ACEs training in the baccalaureate nursing program, and am excited about the impact the ACEs training will have on future nursing care and in our community.鈥�
鈥淭his is a great example of our expert nursing team finding innovative ways of providing a comprehensive means of treating patients and meeting their needs both physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually and taking our students alongside in this process,鈥� said 91福利社 College of Health Professions Dean, Dr. Don Peace. 鈥淥ur nursing faculty clearly have their fingers on the pulse of what it takes to provide a great educational experience for our students.鈥�
鈥淭o see our work in print is like that final stamp of approval鈥攖hat what we are doing is important,鈥� Cross said.