Mitigating climate change and all hazards emergency management to ensure sustainable trauma-informed healthcare professional education

Introduction/Background
Climate change directly threatens human health through the ferocity and number of events increasing exponentially. Not only does this disrupt access to, and delivery of, healthcare to individuals around the globe, it also impacts on those involved in healthcare professions education (HPE), along with the continued growth of the healthcare workforce. Moreover, there can be an increased psychological burden on healthcare workers due to their own experiences of trauma and loss during and in the aftermath of disasters, and the experiences of vicarious trauma and retraumatisation for those with lived experience, in addition to compassion fatigue as they care for others.

Methods
In this activity-based workshop, we will adopt the ‘World Café’ technique of rotations of small group discussions to explore in depth various disaster scenarios and the implications to HPE. Each rotation will foster a deeper dive into the scenario to consider the potential challenges and solutions for healthcare professions at the frontline: students, teachers, researchers and practitioners working across the workforce pipeline. The scenarios will include real-world and lived experience facets.

Aims
To discuss these tricky HPE challenges, the aims of this workshop are to explore the emergent themes relating to the complexity of HPE in disasters: physical and psychological safety of students, educators and clinicians during and in the aftermath of disasters, and the sustainability of HPE in such times of disruption. The scenarios will be layered to reflect intersectional overlays as experiences of disasters are not homogenous. The findings of the workshop (group discussions) will be written up for a journal publication.

Discussion
There is much to be considered in this space. Knowledge is ever-evolving. Workshop participants from their various contexts can add to these insights to strengthen praxis, both in the immediate aftermath and in longer term recovery.