Talk:Trauma center

Opening comments
(copied from Talk:Emergency room

I also think that there is a need to have a seperate entry for trauma center. All trauma centers are emergency rooms but not all emergency rooms are trauma centers. I remember, from my EMT training that there are different levels of trauma centers as well but do not remember them. I also remember that at Denver General (a trauma center that was used as an example in my EMT class and located in Denver, Colorado) that you have something like a 90% survival rate if you still have a pulse after reaching their trauma center from suffering trauma to the heart. In other words: if you were to be stabbed through the heart, something that is almost always fatal, in Denver General's trauma center there would be a 90% chance that they could repair the damage. (My memory of the actual percent comes from a nine year old memory and as such I don't feel comfortable using it in the actual entry.)

I also believe that a trauma center entry should contain the various levels of care that each level of a trauma center is able to provide care for, the needed staff to support that level of trauma center, and the various other hospital services that are required for that care beyond the trauma center. For example: a burn unit is required to further the care that a trauma center starts on a burn victim; a quarantine area is needed to even treat someone infected by a particularly nasty contagious disease like smallpox (as well as a micro-biology lab, flaming air conditionaing exhaust systems (the exhausted air must get hot enough to destroy any possible microbes), etc.), a hazardous materials unit is required to treat exposure to some of the more nasty chemicals (possibly terrorist weapons) as the staff needs to be decontaminated after they treat the patient (hydrofluoric acid is skin soluable and may even permeate latex gloves), etc..

Tres (please email me if you make a comment at class5@pacbell.net)


 * If there is someone who can find a text source for the definition, either from an EMT class or something similar, that would be helpful. And just a pedantic FYI, Denver General was renamed to Denver Health Medical Center. Kerowyn 23:38, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

History
I think the drive and experience to establish trauma centers came out of the wartime experience in Vietnam. The concept of the Trauma Golden Hour was developed out of military trauma care in the Vietnam conflict. That was the idea that the best survival rates in trauma cases happen when the patient is gotten to an operating room in the first hour post-injury. It also created new tools like Military Anti-shock Trousers (MAST pants) that are used in the civilian realm today to combat blood loss. This experience led to a system of federal grants that established aeromedical helicopter service in many parts of the United States. I don't have anything written to support this. It's just my recollection. Your research might prove this or define me as needing to do more reading on the topic. User:David Jordan
 * I think a quite reasonable claim for the first trauma center based on Trauma Systems can be made by the Birmingham Accident Hospital. Note it opened before antibiotics appeared so infection was an even bigger threat than now.  Feel free to disagree -with reasons.  I'm in the process of a fairly large update on this. JRPG (talk) 18:50, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Trauma.org completely skips the work of Dr. Cowley in MD: After many years of research and discussion, the Army awarded Dr. Cowley a contract for $100,000 to study shock in people. He developed the first clinical shock trauma unit in the nation; the unit consisted of two beds (later four beds). By 1960, staff was trained and equipment was in place. Patients began to "trickle in" referred by other physicians -- but they came in dying. And, in fact, many people called the four-bed unit the "death lab". Dr. Cowley and his staff were able to save some of those patients, getting them through the critical phase and then returning them to their own physicians.

Gradually, the "Golden Hour" theory was emerging based on the importance of speed as well as skill in operating procedures. As he explained in an interview: "There is a golden hour between life and death. If you are critically injured you have less than 60 minutes to survive. You might not die right then; it may be three days or two weeks later -- but something has happened in your body that is irreparable."

In 1968 Dr. Cowley negotiated to have patients brought in by military helicopter to get patients to the shock trauma unit more quickly. After much discussion with the Maryland State Police, the first med-evac transport occurred in 1969 after the opening of the five-story, 32-bed Center for the Study of Trauma.GGS (talk) 08:29, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Pediatric
Can anyone with the knowledge add a section on Pediatric Trauma centers? --Flyguy33 (talk) 19:01, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

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Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Trauma Center (disambiguation) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:04, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Personnel on standby for level I trauma centres in the United States
I noticed that listed among the groups of people required to be on duty 24 hours a day at a trauma hospital, there is listed 'an education program' and a 'preventive and outreach programs.' I am wondering if this is a blunder or an intended part of the article. Is anyone able to enlighten me? 27.125.165.242 (talk) 15:32, 29 October 2022 (UTC)