Tag Archives: trauma team

Prehospital

The EMS Handoff: Opportunity for Improvement

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Handoffs occur in trauma care all the time. EMS hands the patient off to the trauma team. ED physicians hand off to each other at end of shift. They also hand off patients to the inpatient trauma service. Residents on the trauma service hand off to other residents at the end of their call shift. Attending surgeons hand off to each other as they change service or a call night ends. The same process also occurs with many of the other disciplines involved in patient care as well.

Every one of these handoffs is a potential problem. Our business is incredibly complicated, and given that dozens of details on dozens of patients need to be passed on, the opportunity for error is always present. And the fact that resident work hours are becoming more and more limited increases the need for handoffs and the number of potential errors.

Today, I’ll look at information transfer at the first handoff point, EMS to trauma team. Some literature has suggested that there are 16 specific prehospital data points that affect patient outcome and must be included in the EMS report. How good are we at making sure this happens?

An observational study was carried out at a US Level I trauma center with video recording capabilities in the resuscitation room. Video was reviewed to document the “transmission” part of the EMS report. Trauma chart documentation was also reviewed to see if the “reception” half of the process by the trauma team occurred as well.

Here are the factoids:

  • A total of 96 handoffs were reviewed over a one year period
  • The maximum number of data elements in the study was 1536 (96 patients x 16 data elements)
  • The total number “transmitted” was 473, but only 329 of those were “received.”
  • This is not quite as bad as it seems, since 483 points were judged as not applicable by the reviewers. However, this left 580 that were applicable but were not mentioned by EMS.
  • Of the 16 key elements, the median number transmitted was 5, with a range of 1-9.

This sounds bad. However, the EMS professionals and the physicians have somewhat different objectives. EMS desperately wants to share what they know about the scene and the patient. The trauma team wants to start the evaluation process using their own eyes and hands. What to do?

Bottom line: EMS to trauma team handoffs are a problem for many hospitals. EMS has a lot of valuable information, and the trauma team wants to keep the patient alive. They are both immersed in their own world, working to do what they think is best for the patient. Unfortunately, they could do better if the just worked together a bit more.

Tomorrow I’ll share a solution to the EMS-trauma team handoff problem.

Reference: Information loss in emergency medical services handover of trauma patients. Prehosp Emerg Care 13:280-285, 2009.

Prehospital

Does Trauma Team Prenotification By EMS Decrease Mortality?

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A few months ago, I heard this statement at a conference I was attending:

“Of course, prenotification of the trauma team by EMS decreases hospital mortality”

And of course, whenever I hear someone say “of course”, it makes me think about it. How do we know for sure? So I made one of my frequent trips to PubMed to find the basis for the statement.

And guess what? He shouldn’t have said “of course.” The literature is very scarce on this topic. There are actually some good papers detailing the advantages of prehospital notification for things like stroke and STEMI. But trauma?

A group in Melbourne, Australia performed a systematic review of the literature on this topic for the Australia-India Trauma System Collaboration. They were interesting in finding information about early (<24 hour) and overall (<30 day) mortality, as well as trauma team presence, time to critical hospital interventions, and hospital length of stay. Over a thousand articles were identified, but half did not have proper study design, and a quarter weren’t about notification. After excluding those, and others that failed other criteria, they were left with only three to review!

Here are the factoids:

  • Two of the studies were small, with only 81 and 269 participants and individual hospitals
  • The remaining study was a very large retrospective analysis of over 72,000 patients from 59 hospitals in Canada
  • All three had serious risk for bias and significant confounding variables
  • The large study showed a significant improvement in overall mortality from 32% to 23%, the smaller studies did not. But the study quality was so poor for this outcome that we can’t really be certain, and these numbers seem very high coming from Canada.
  • No conclusions could be drawn for short term mortality, length of stay, or time to interventions in the ED
  • The studies only involved high-income countries; nothing could be learned for low to medium-income countries.

Bottom line: Three studies in 27 years??! So sad. It certainly seems like having the trauma team informed and prepped in advance should count for something. But like so many other things in this business, we just don’t know for sure. Having everyone in place and ready to receive the patient, and getting other in-hospital resources ready (e.g. OR) may shorten time to definitive, life-saving treatment. But for now, we’ll just have to pretend. Until someone designs and performs a much better study.

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Reference: Prehospital notification for major trauma patients requiring emergency hospital transport: A systematic review. J Evidence Based Med 10(3):212-221, 2017.

Philosophy

When Is It Too Late To Call A Trauma Activation?

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This is a related, follow-on post from yesterday, where I discussed activating your trauma team after transfer from another hospital. What about patients presenting directly to your hospital, but some time after their injury?

Admit it. It’s happened to you. You get paged to a trauma activation, hustle on down to the ED, and get dressed. The patient is calmly and comfortably lying on a cart, staring at you like you’re from Mars. Then you hear the story. He has a grade V spleen injury. But he just got back from CT scan. And his car crash was yesterday!

Is this appropriate? The answer is no! But, as you will see, the answer is not always as obvious as this example. The top thing to keep in mind in triggering a trauma activation appropriately is the reason behind having them in the first place.

The entire purpose of a trauma activation is speed. The assumption must be that your patient is dying and you have to (quickly) prove that they are not. It’s the null hypothesis of trauma.

Trauma teams are designed with certain common features:

  • A group of people with a common purpose
  • The ability to speed through the exam and bedside procedures via division of labor
  • Rapid access to diagnostic studies, like CT scan
  • Availability of blood products, if needed
  • Immediate access to an OR, if needed
  • Recognition in key departments throughout the hospital that a patient may need resources quickly

Every trauma center has trauma activation triage criteria that try to predict which patients will need this kind of speed. Does the patient in the example above need this? NO! He’s already been selected out to do well. Why, he’s practically finished the nonoperative solid organ management protocol on his own at home.

Here are some general rules:

  • If the patient meets any of your physiologic and/or anatomic criteria, they are or can be sick. Trigger immediately, regardless of how much time has passed.
  • If they meet only mechanism criteria and it’s been more than 6 hours since the event, they probably do not need the fast track.
  • If they only meet the “clinician / EMS judgment” criteria, think about what the suspected injuries are based on a quick history and brief exam. Once again, if more than 6 hours have passed and there are no physiologic disturbances, the time for needing a trauma activation is probably past.

If you do decide not to trigger an activation in one of these cases, please let your trauma administrative team (trauma medical director, trauma program manager) know as soon as possible. This may appear to be undertriage as they analyze the admission, and it’s important for them to know the reasoning behind your choice so they can accurately document under- and over-triage.

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Philosophy

Do I Have To Call My Trauma Team For Incoming Transfers?

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I had a great question sent in by a reader last week:

Some trauma centers receive a number of transfers  from referring hospitals. Much of the time, a portion of the workup has already been done by that hospital. If the patient meets one or more of your trauma activation criteria, do you still need to activate your team when they arrive?

And the answer is: sometimes. But probably not that often.

Think about it. The reason you should be activating your team is that you suspect the patient may have an injury that demands rapid diagnosis and treatment. The purpose of any trauma activation is speed. Rapid evaluation. Fast lab results. Quick access to CT scan or OR. If a significant amount of time has already passed (transported to an outside hospital, worked up for an hour or two, then transported to you), then it is less likely that a trauma activation will benefit the patient.

There are four classes of trauma activation criteria. I’ll touch on each one and the need to activate in a delayed fashion if present, in priority order.

  • Physiologic. If there is a significant disturbance in vital signs while in transit to you (hypotension, tachycardia, respiratory problems, coma), then you must activate. Something else is going on that needs to be corrected as soon as the patient arrives. And remember the two mandatory ACS criteria that fall into this category: respiratory compromise/need for an emergent airway, and patients receiving blood to maintain vital signs. But a patient who needed an airway who is already intubated and no longer compromised does not need to be a trauma activation.
  • Anatomic. Most simple anatomic criteria (e.g. long bone or pelvic fractures) do not need a trauma activation unless the patient is beginning to show signs of physiologic compromise. However, anatomic criteria that require rapid treatment or access to the OR (proximal amputations, mangled or pulseless extremities, spinal cord injury) should be activated.
  • Mechanism. Most of the vague mechanistic criteria (falls, pedestrian struck, vehicle intrusion) do not require trauma activation after transfer to you. But once again, if the mechanism suggests a need for further rapid diagnosis or treatment (penetrating injury to abdomen), then activate.
  • Comorbidities. This includes underlying diseases, extremes of age, and pregnancy. In general, these will not require trauma activation after they arrive.

Bottom line: In many cases, the patient transferred in from another hospital will not need to be a trauma activation, especially if they have been reasonably assessed there. The patient should be rapidly eyeballed by your emergency physicians, and if there is any doubt about their condition, activate then.

However, if little workup was done at the outside hospital (my preference), and the injuries are “fresh” (less than a few hours old), then definitely call your team. 

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Philosophy

Why Did The Trauma Team Cut Off My Clothes?

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The fifth highest priority taught in the ATLS course is exposure. This generally means getting the patient’s clothes off so any hidden injuries can be identified. Early in my career, I was called to see a patient who had a gunshot to the chest that had been missed because the consulting physician had neglected to cut off her bra. A small caliber wound was found under the elastic strap in her left anterior axillary line after a chest xray showed a bullet in mid-thorax.

The usual trauma activation routine is to cut off the clothes. There are several tips and tricks we use to do this quickly. And a number of commercial products are out there to make it even easier.

But do we really need to cut everyone’s clothes off? I’m not disputing the fact that it’s important to be able to examine every square inch. But do we need to destroy everything our patient is wearing? I once saw a sequined wedding dress cut off (it’s almost as bad as cutting off a down jacket).

The answer is no. The key concept here is patient safety. Can you safely remove the clothing in a less destructive way? For most victims of major blunt trauma, we worry a lot about the spine. Unfortunately, it’s just not possible to allow the patient to wriggle out of their clothes and protect their spine. The same goes for fractures; it may be too uncomfortable to remove clothing because of fracture movement so scissors are required.

Penetrating trauma is a bit different, and in many cases it’s a good idea to try to get the clothing off intact. Once again, if spinal injury is a consideration (gunshots only), the involved clothes should be cut off. A patient with a gunshot to the chest can probably have their pants safely and gently pulled off, but their shirt and coat must be cut.

The police forensic investigators like to have intact clothing, if possible. This is another good reason to try to remove clothing from penetrating injury victims without cutting.

Bottom line: Think before you cut clothes! Major blunt trauma and bad injuries require scissors. Lesser energy blunt injury may allow some pieces of clothing to be removed in the usual method. Most penetrating injury does not require cutting. But if you must (for patient safety), avoid any holes in the fabric so forensics experts can do their job.