Providing Gender Sensitive and Responsive Trauma-Informed Psychiatric Nursing Care. How Hard Can It Be?

Abstract

This paper addresses the challenge of providing gender sensitive and responsive trauma-informed care (TIC) in psychiatric nursing practice. Gender identity, gender subordination, and gender-related trauma history are examined as three key individual-level factors that affect nurses’ capacity to engage therapeutically to provide gender sensitive and responsive TIC. Using Peplau’s Interpersonal Theory and building on a shared trauma and resilience model, gender-sensitive and responsive TIC is situated within interpersonal science and the ability of the psychiatric nurse to attune to her own and her patient’s gender ideologies. Strategies for transforming practice including self-reflection, self-compassion, and peer and supervisor support are reviewed. Noting the import of the practice environment, several observations of changes needed at the level of the unit, organization, and society to effect gender equitable policies that enable the implementation of gender-sensitive and responsive TIC are made.