Articles about

Trauma Informed Care

Reflection: Risk

January 26th, 2021 — What we’re aiming for is a neutral, analytical, non judgmental, safety-positive relationship to risk. To get there, it helps to identify what might be in the way.

"That Last Treatment Made Me Worse"

February 4th, 2021 — The phone rings in your clinic. When you pick it up, a patient says, “Hi, I need to talk to you about something. I think that last treatment made me worse.” What do you do next? Here’s an outline of how to create a positive outcome, i.e. make some safety, from this stressful and unavoidable situation. If you treat enough people, you will certainly get this phone call at some point!

More about Sketchy Guys (and Related Topics)

March 17th, 2021 — Many clinic safety incidents, before they actually happen, include some kind of quiet internal warning for the practitioner -- a sense that something about the situation is “off” or some misgiving or hesitation about a choice that in hindsight, turns out to be a mistake.

Boundaries in Community Acupuncture, Part 1

March 28th, 2021 — Although your relationships with patients will vary based on a number of factors, not least how invested they are in receiving acupuncture, there should be a core consistency in how YOU approach them.

Safety/Risk Continuum for Talking to Patients

March 27th, 2021 — Just like with needling, the more invasive/aggressive you are and the more territory you cover in verbal communication, the more risks you’ll encounter. Choose wisely.

Anatomy of a Safety Incident #2

January 26th, 2021 — Boundaries and empathy don’t have to be in an either/or opposition to each other; creatively making safety (even out of bad situations) allows them to be both/and.

When Acupuncture Overwhelms

April 7th, 2021 — Psycho-emotional triggers aren’t listed in the Clean Needle Technique Manual as an adverse event related to acupuncture, but according to our AERD data, they’re more common than fainting (which is listed).

Anatomy of a Safety Incident #3

April 12th, 2021 — There’s always a dynamic tension between safety and access. You can’t treat someone if you can’t treat them *safely* -- which means unfortunately you can’t treat everyone. Even though, as a community acupuncturist, you want to treat everyone.

Kind of Like a Pit Bull

January 18th, 2021 — A common argument among acupuncturists is that nobody can safely practice acupuncture without at least three years of post graduate training at an accredited acupuncture school. Also, dogs.

Reflection: Trauma Informed Care

January 24th, 2021 — A lot of what we’re advocating on this blog is a predictable, neutral approach to acupuncture safety that’s grounded in being 1) well-organized and 2) tolerant of humans being human. In our experience, those two elements fit together quite nicely.

Social Safety Swiss Cheese

July 14th, 2021 — Reflections on acupuncture safety incidents that involve no needles at all.

Anatomy of a Safety Incident #4, Part 2

May 22nd, 2021 — Or, the 20/20 hindsight version. This incident clearly demonstrates the dynamic tension between safety and access, and I kind of hate that.

Trying to Be Trauma-Informed about Everything

November 30th, 2021 — One thing I know about trauma is that recovering from it requires facing as much of the truth as you can. You might not be able to stand much truth at first and so you have to build up your tolerance over time. Facing the truth, like other forms of healing, is often a slow, incremental process. But I’ve learned that I can count on the truth to show up as a relief and also as a friend -- eventually.

Don't Get Punched in the Face

December 6th, 2021 — At POCA Tech we teach Trauma Informed Care because it’s a basic, pragmatic safety measure; sometimes people with trauma histories might be cute fluffy sad things, but a lot of the time they’re... not.

Anatomy of a Safety Incident #5, Part 1

March 21st, 2023 — This particular incident is pretty irresistible as a teachable moment because nowhere in our materials on trauma informed care do we really dig into how bureaucracy can function as a trauma trigger, especially for low income people, and I bet there are a lot of people who don’t really understand how that works.

Anatomy of a Safety Incident #5, Part 2

March 21st, 2023 — As passionate as I am about trauma informed care, it was definitely not my goal to put on a demonstration of the need for it.

Anatomy of a Safety Incident #5, Part 3

March 21st, 2023 — In general, when somebody gets triggered by bureaucracy the way I did, the best case scenario for what happens next is NOTHING. The person gets overwhelmed and flees the scene, and that’s all. Maybe they pull themselves together to try again another day. It’s more likely, though, that what follows is punitive consequences in some form or another, from the bureaucracy itself.

>