Yesterday I detailed some standard info on trauma bay size. Today, I’ll describe what I found when I brought in my trusty tape measure today to check out my trauma bays at Regions Hospital. I came up with several helpful measurements to help gauge the relative utility of the rooms.
Here are the indices that I came up with:
- TBTA: Trauma Bay Total Area. This is the total square footage (meterage?) measured wall to wall.
- TBWA: Trauma Bay Working Area. This is the area that excludes equipment carts next to a wall, and areas under countertops that extend away from the wall.
- TBAA: Trauma Bay Available Area. This is the TBWA less any other unusable areas in the room. We have an equipment post near one corner that eats up 16.5 sq ft of space. Also remember to subtract the area taken up by the patient bed, as this area is not available to the trauma team, either.
- TBSI: Trauma Bay Space Index. This value is derived by dividing the TBAA by the number of team members in the room. It gives an indication of how much space is available for each trauma team member to work in.
Values in my trauma center:
- TBTA: 291 sq ft
- TBWA: 220.5 sq ft
- TBAA: 186.5 sq ft
- TBSI: 15.5
What does it all mean? Hard to say without more info from you for comparison. For my team, it means we each have a 4×4 foot square to move around in, on average. This is fairly tight, I would say.
Why don’t you generate some comparison data? Tomorrow is “take a tape measure to work” day! Calculate these constants in your own resuscitation room. Then post them by leaving comments below, or tweet/email me the values for the metrics listed above. If I get enough, I’ll post the data here!
