Ways to Identify, Understand Complex Developmental Trauma in Children

Contemporary Clinic® interviewed Bethany Hall, MSN, owner of Healing Connection, on the role nurse practitioners have in understanding and approaching care for children with complex developmental trauma (CDT).

In this discussion, Hall explains ways nurse practitioners can learn how to identify signs and symptoms of CDT in pediatric populations.

Alana Hippensteele: What kind of services are available for nurse practitioners who are interested in understanding CDT further?

Bethany Hall: So, along with everybody else, we've kind of switched to a more virtual platform during the pandemic. So, I recently launched our website, and we're working on getting a lot more of our trainings in an on-demand and virtual format because it's difficult to travel and to do speaking engagements.

So, I do currently offer any virtual trainings via Zoom. So, on our website, we have a list of different topics for medical professionals, such as understanding [adverse childhood experiences] scores and their long-term effect on health outcomes or increasing felt safety in your family practice. So, there's a variety of topics that we've already spoken to.

We also love to tailor our education to specific interest areas. So, if your family practice group really wants to learn more about a specific topic in this area, we love to get that feedback and can develop specific training programs for your practice or your group of colleagues, and we can offer all of that via Zoom.

Once it's safe to do so, I also travel and speak as part of panels and provide in-person training. So, some of our trainings are even up to 3 days long, where we go through a really in-depth understanding of the effects of trauma on the brain, body, and belief system, and how we can coach parents, how we can be medical advocates in that area.

So, like I said, we are really trying to work towards that platform to get more of our trainings online, but currently we do offer all of our talks and education via Zoom conferencing.