Improving Initial Trauma Care Efficiency
Abstract
Introduction: Rapid and efficient initial care of the trauma patient has been shown to lower the mortality of trauma populations. Efficiency in the primary survey is a key factor in the care provided to the trauma patient, as multiple publications report mortality rates increasing beyond the platinum 10 minutes. In order to decrease the time spent on the primary survey, alterations to the trauma evaluation protocol were made and the effects were measured. Materials and Methods: Emergency medicine and surgical staff were trained to comply with a new trauma evaluation protocol. After training and an implementation period, 21 trauma evaluations were sampled and timed over the course of a year. These evaluations were compared to historical trauma evaluation times. Results: Time to completion of the trauma primary survey improved by 26.8 percent with a time savings of 1.5 minutes (p<0.05). The areas with the most significant gains in efficiency were between measuring breathing and circulation and between measuring circulation and completion of the primary survey. Conclusion: Standardizing, institutionalizing, and training a specific trauma evaluation protocol during the initial trauma primary survey resulted in improved efficiency. This may represent a substantial improvement in care for high risk trauma patients when minutes matter.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 16, 2020
- Accession Number
- AD1089478
Entities
People
- Andrew O. Hall
- Carl Freeman
- Iram Qureshi
- Jacob J. Glaser