Medical Trauma in Young Adults: Centering the Patient Voice

At its second roundtable in a series focused on young adults with chronic conditions, Generation Patient convened a multi-stakeholder learning community to discuss how the health care community can best support patients experiencing medical trauma.

Proceedings, co-authored by young adults with chronic conditions and published in the Journal of Patient Experience, outline the barriers that young adults face to accessing health care, and how that can manifest into experiences of medical trauma. The authors encourage centering patient voices in medical care by actively listening to patients and minimizing dismissal of their concerns. The authors also recommend taking a trauma-informed approach to addressing young adults’ mental health care as they navigate both their chronic condition and their experiences of typical life milestones. Lastly, the authors make the case that leveraging patient voices in research can help to both quantify and describe the experiences and impacts of medical trauma, which can pave the way for a system that better supports young adult patients.