1. Ensure the safety of the prehospital care providers and the patient.
2. Assess the scene situation to determine the need for additional resources.
3. Recognize the kinematics that produced the injuries.
4. Use the primary assessment approach to identify life-threatening conditions.
5. Provide appropriate airway management while maintaining cervical spine stabilization as indicated.
6. Support ventilation and deliver oxygen to maintain a SpO2 greater than 95 %.
7. Control any significant external hemorrhage.
8. Provide basic shock therapy, including appropriately splinting musculoskeletal injuries and restoring and maintaining normal body temperature.
9. Maintain manual spinal immobilization until the patient is immobilized.
10. For critically injured trauma patients, initiate transport to the closest appropriate facility as soon as possible after EMS arrival on scene.
11. Initiate warmed intravenous fluid replacement en route to the receiving facility.
12. Ascertain the patient’s medical history and perform a secondary assessment when life-threatening problems have been satisfactorily managed or have been ruled out.
13. Provide adequate pain relief.
14. Provide thorough and accurate communication regarding the patient and the circumstances of the injury to the receiving facility.
15. Above all, do no further harm.
Quality prehospital trauma care is essential to the success of a trauma system. As the leader of the trauma team, it is critical for the trauma surgeon to actively participate in the education of their EMS personnel. Offer constructive criticism when necessary, invite prehospital personnel to participate in trauma quality improvement, and take an active role in their continuing education.
References
2.
3.
National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council. Accidental death and disability: the neglected disease of modern society. Rockville: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; 1966.
4.
Chapleau W, Burba A, Pons P, Page D. The paramedic. New York: Mc-Graw-Hill; 2012.
5.
PHTLS. Prehospital trauma life support. 8th ed. Burlington: Jones and Bartlett; 2014. p. 475–86.
6.
Mattox K, Moore E, Feliciano D. Trauma. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2012.
Related posts:
Stay updated, free articles. Join our Telegram channel
Full access? Get Clinical Tree
