Greetings everyone and welcome to the Haelan Nurse Chronicles podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Lorre Laws. For those of you who are just tuning in, I’m an author, nurse scientist, educator, and trauma/burnout expert. I’m so happy that you’re here!
Today, we are diving into a critical topic that often goes unnoticed in the healthcare profession – nurse-specific traumatization. As nurses, we are expected to provide optimal care for our patients while also championing well-being and resilience for ourselves and our colleagues. However, there is a significant gap in the resources and support available for nurses experiencing trauma, with symptoms frequently misattributed to burnout.
Today, we will explore the AACN’s 2021 Essentials, which lay the groundwork for nursing schools to prepare graduates for contemporary practice with a focus on personal, professional, and leadership development.
We will also delve into the AACN’s initiative, A Competency-Based Approach to Leadership Development and Resilience for Student Nurses, which involved ten nursing schools in piloting new content aimed at enhancing leadership, resilience, self-care, and well-being skills among students.
Before we launch into all of that, let’s set the stage by taking a peek at the AACN’s Trauma-Informed Care guidelines:
“To help ensure that nurses do not inadvertently become triggers of past-trauma for patients under their care, they should consider the following:
- Assume everyone has experienced some type of trauma in their lives
- Realize we cannot know everyone’s trauma history
- Understand that the goal isn’t necessarily to uncover trauma
Given that nurses are a subset of the “everyone [who] has experienced some type of trauma in their lives”. . . shouldn’t their employers create working conditions that do not inadvertently become triggers for nurses’ past-trauma?
Knowing how important a regulated nervous system is for health and wellbeing, I was expecting to find trauma-informed strategies and practices in the AACN’s Nurse Well-Being & Leadership Tool Kit.
Especially given that we, as nurses, are to assume that every patient has past-trauma and, by inference, every nurse similarly has past-trauma . . .not to mention the inordinate amount of avoidable nurse-specific trauma exposure.
The concepts that inform the competencies and sub competencies that nurse educators are to address in curricula are:
- Well-Being
- Self-Care
- Resilience
- Leadership
With great enthusiasm, I read each of the concepts, competencies, and sub-competencies with these key points in mind:
We know that a regulated nervous system contributes significantly to overall wellbeing.
We know that a regulated nervous system is the foundation upon which self-caring practices are optimally practiced.
We know that a regulated nervous system is foundational to resilience.
We know that a regulated nervous system is required to effectively practice and lead others.
But were any of the Essentials competencies trauma-informed?
Not. A. Single. One.
Here’s where the big glaring gap is in nursing education and practice.
Let’s unpack this using Domain 10: Personal, Professional, and Leadership Development.

As nurses, we’re to demonstrate a commitment to personal health and well-being (10.1).
Shouldn’t employers, then, have the same commitment?
How can a nurse demonstrate their commitment to personal health and well-being if they’re working in unsafe conditions?
Let’s move to sub-competency 10.1c that states that nurses should contribute to an environment that promotes self-care, personal health, and well-being.
And yet, nurses’ nervous systems get hijacked at work under the harsh conditions in which most nurses are practicing. That’s where my research comes into play. Nurses should first be safe in their practices, regulated in their nervous systems, so they can THEN contribute to an environment that promotes self-care, personal health, and well-being.
And last, let’s explore sub-competency 10.1d that states nurses should evaluate the workplace environment to determine the level of health and well-being.
Nurses are doing just that. Nurses are reporting unsafe, unhealthy, and unwell practice environments. Nurses are going on strike. Nurses are speaking out on social media.
What is the nurse to do if the organization is unwilling to provide a safe work environment that promotes health and well-being?
So here we are again. Nurses are to demonstrate healthy, self-care behaviors that promote wellness and resiliency (10.1a of the Self-Care Competency).
Let me be clear. Asking nurses to demonstrate self-care behaviors in a dumpster fire of a work environment is beyond unreasonable. Nurses can’t, in a 12-hour shift, take a lunch break or meet their basic biological needs. If I were writing the competencies, they’d look something like this:
Dr. Lorre’s Competencies:
- Nurses must be provided with safe, properly staffed, and adequately resourced settings to facilitate their demonstration of self-caring behaviors that promote wellness and resiliency
- Nurses must be provided with safe, properly staffed, and adequately resourced settings that contribute to their ability to promote self-care, personal health, and well-being.
- Nurses must be provided with safe, properly staffed, and adequately resourced settings and iteratively evaluate them to determine the level of health and well-being.
Are the AACN Essentials and Competencies unintentionally and implicitly shifting the responsibility for safe, healthy, and well workplaces to nurses?
Yes, nurses need to do their part. But under the current conditions, it’s like taking a 5 ml syringe of water to a forest fire.

Until such time that organizations and health care systems prioritize nurse safety and professional wellbeing, we need to take matters into our own hands. We can’t wait for the system to fix itself. We can’t have another nurse burnout, experience avoidable nurse-specific traumatization, or bounce from the professional altogether.
The time is now.
We can learn how to insulate ourselves from the unsafe and harsh working conditions.
We can learn how to navigate our nervous system as the foundation of all other self-caring practices.
We can thrive instead of just survive in our practices.
We can usher in Nursing 2.0 – The Nurse Safety & Professional Wellbeing Edition.
To learn more about what you can do to get started on your healing journey, your leadership journey, please join my free webinar where we will take a deep dive into these topics and more.
Thank you for tuning in. Until next time, from my healer’s heart to yours, namaste.
Dr. Lorre 💕