Medical trauma is the experience of traumatic stress as a result of interactions with the healthcare system, and may be an overlooked traumatic experience that has a variety of biopsychosocial concerns that will present in primary care settings. This presentation will provide attendees with an introduction to medical trauma as a healthcare phenomenon, including the interacting processes related to the development of medically-induced traumatic stress, categorizations of medical trauma, and the associated risk factors and biopsychosocial consequences. The use of the Enduring Somatic Threat (EST) model as a way to conceptualize the development, maintenance, and experience of medical trauma will be proposed and compared to traditional conceptualizations of traumatic stress. The presenters will then transition to ways in which interdisciplinary primary care providers can identify and address medical trauma through the Primary Care Behavioral Health (PCBH) model. The presentation will end with an exploration of the ways in which PCBH systems and clinicians can work to create trauma-informed primary care spaces to adequately prevent and/or respond to medical trauma experienced by their patients.
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