The pace of a trauma resuscitation: experience matters

Trauma room requirements

Effective shock (or trauma) room management requires thorough preparation, staff competence, dedicated infrastructure and organised protocols. Shock rooms must be sufficiently equipped according to the hospital's designated level of care. This chapter outlines essential aspects, including equipment and facilities, staff qualifications and composition, and communication practices. Key areas including initial assessment, diagnostic procedures, emergency interventions, and future aspects in the care of severely injured patients are addressed, along with emerging innovations in trauma care.

Leadership factors for cardiopulmonary resuscitation for clinicians in-hospital; behaviours, skills and strategies: A systematic review and synthesis without meta-analysis

AIM

To identify leadership factors for clinicians during in-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

DESIGN

Systematic review with synthesis without meta-analysis.

METHODS

The review was guided by SWiM, assessed for quality using CASP and reported with PRISMA.

DATA SOURCES

Cochrane, EMBASE, PubMed, Medline, Scopus and CINAHL (years of 2013-2023) and a manual reference list search of all included studies.

RESULTS

A total of 60 papers were identified with three major themes of useful resuscitation leadership; 'social skills', 'cognitive skills and behaviour' and 'leadership development skills' were identified. Main factors included delegating effectively, while being situationally aware of team members' ability and progress during resuscitation, and being empathetic and supportive, yet 'controlling the room' using a hands-off style. Shared decision-making to reduce cognitive load for one leader was shown to improve effective teamwork. Findings were limited by heterogeneity of studies and inconsistently applied tools to measure leadership.

CONCLUSION

Traditional authoritarian leadership styles are not wanted by team members with preference for shared leadership and collaboration. Balancing this with the need for team members to see leaders in 'control of the room' brings new challenges for leaders and trainers of resuscitation.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PROFESSION

All clinicians need effective leadership skills for cardiopulmonary resuscitation in-hospital. Nurses provide first response and ongoing leadership for cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Nurses typically display suitable skills that align with useful resuscitation leader factors.

IMPACT

What were the main findings? Collaboration rather than an authoritarian approach to leadership is preferred by team members. Nurses are suitable to 'control the room'. Restricting resuscitation team size will manage disruptive behaviour of team members.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

PROSPERO Registration: CRD42022385630.

PATIENT OF PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION

No patient of public contribution.

The effect of a clock's presence on trauma resuscitation times in a Dutch level-1 trauma center: a pre-post cohort analysis

PURPOSE

Interventions performed within the first hour after trauma increase survival rates. Literature showed that measuring times can optimize the trauma resuscitation process as time awareness potentially reduces acute care time. This study examined the effect of a digital clock placement on trauma resuscitation times in an academic level-1 trauma center.

METHODS

A prospective observational pre-post cohort analysis was conducted for six months before and after implementing a visible clock in the trauma resuscitation room, indicating the time passed since starting the in-hospital resuscitation process. Trauma patients (age ≥ 16) presented during weekdays between 9.00 AM and 9.00 PM were included. Time until diagnostics (X-Ray, FAST, or CT scan), time until therapeutic intervention, and total resuscitation time were measured manually with a stopwatch by a researcher in the trauma resuscitation room. Patient characteristics and information regarding trauma- and injury type were collected. Times before and after clock implementation were compared.

RESULTS

In total, 100 patients were included, 50 patients in each cohort. The median total resuscitation time (including CT scan) was 40.3 min (IQR 23.3) in the cohort without a clock compared to 44.3 (IQR 26.1) minutes in the cohort with a clock. The mean time until the first diagnostic and until the CT scan was 8.3 min (SD 3.1) and 25.5 min (SD 7.1) without a clock compared to 8.6 min (SD 6.5) and 26.6 min (SD 11.5) with a clock. Severely injured patients (Injury Severity Score (ISS) ≥ 16) showed a median resuscitation time in the cohort without a clock (n = 9) of 54.6 min (IQR 50.5) compared to 46.0 min (IQR 21.6) in the cohort with a clock (n = 8).

CONCLUSION

This study found no significant reduction in trauma resuscitation time after clock placement. Nonetheless, the data represent a heterogeneous population, not excluding specific patient categories for whom literature has shown that a short time is essential, such as severely injured patients, might benefit from the presence of a trauma clock. Future research is recommended into resuscitation times of specific patient categories and practices to investigate time awareness.

Non-technical skills and teamwork in trauma: from the emergency department to the operating room

Management of a trauma patient is a challenging process. Swift and accurate clinical assessment is required and time-sensitive decisions and life-saving procedures must be performed in an unstable patient. This requires a coordinated response by both the emergency room (ER) and operating room (OR) teams. However, a team of experts does not necessarily make an expert team. Root cause analysis of adverse events in surgery has shown that failures in coordination, planning, task management and particularly communication are the main causes for medical errors. While most research is focused on the ER trauma team, the trauma OR team also deserves attention. In fact, OR team dynamics may resemble more the ER team than the elective OR team. ER and OR trauma teams assemble on short notice, and their members, who are from different specialties and backgrounds, may not train regularly together or even know each other beforehand. And yet, they have to perform high-risk procedures and make high stake decisions, in a time-sensitive manner. The airline industry has long recognized the role of team training and non-technical skills (NTS) in reducing hazards. The implementation of the so called crew resource management or crisis resource management (CRM) has significantly made airline travel safer and the transposition to the medical context, with specific training in non-technical skills, has also brought great benefits. In fact, it is clear that adoption of non-technical skills (NTS) in healthcare has led to an increase in patient safety. In this narrative review we recapitulate some of the key non-technical skills and their relevance in trauma, with a focus on both the emergency department (ER) and the operating room (OR) teams, as well as on the transition of care from one to the other. Also, we explore the use of debriefing the team, as well as the roles of NTS training in both undergraduate and postgraduate settings. We review some of the existing trauma training courses and their roles in developing NTS. Finally, we briefly address the challenges posed by the development of trauma hybrid operating rooms.

Impact of Trauma Resuscitation Emergency Care Nurse Deployment in Trauma Activations in a Rural Trauma Center

BACKGROUND

Although the role of a dedicated trauma nurse has been implemented in an urban setting, it has not been studied in the rural trauma setting. We instituted a trauma resuscitation emergency care (TREC) nurse role to respond to trauma activations at our rural trauma center.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to determine the impact of TREC nurse deployment on the timeliness of resuscitation interventions in trauma activations.

METHODS

This pre- and postintervention study at a rural Level I trauma center compared the time to resuscitation interventions before (August 2018 to July 2019) and after (August 2019 to July 2020) deploying TREC nurses to trauma activations.

RESULTS

A total of 2,593 participants were studied, of which 1,153 (44%) were in the pre-TREC group and 1,440 (56%) in the post-TREC group. After TREC deployment, the median (interquartile range [IQR]) emergency department times within the first hour decreased from 45 (31.23-53) to 35 (16-51) min ( p = .013). The median (IQR) time to the operating room within the first hour decreased from 46 (37-52) to 29 (12-46) min ( p = .001), and within the first 2 hr, decreased from 59 (43.8-86) to 48 (23-72) min ( p = .014).

CONCLUSION

Our study found that TREC nurse deployment improved resuscitation intervention timeliness during the first 2 hr (early phase) of trauma activations.

The effect of an on-site trauma surgeon during resuscitations of severely injured patients

BACKGROUND

Although the timely involvement of trauma surgeons is widely accepted as standard care in a trauma center, there is an ongoing debate regarding the value of an on-site attending trauma surgeon compared to an on-call trauma surgeon. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of introducing an on-site trauma surgeons and the effect of their presence on the adherence to Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) related tasks and resuscitation pace in the trauma bay.

METHODS

The resuscitations of severely injured (ISS > 15) trauma patients 1 month before and 1 month after the introduction of an on-site trauma surgeon were assessed using video analysis. The primary outcome was total resuscitation time. Second, time from trauma bay admission until tasks were performed, and ATLS adherence were assessed.

RESULTS

Fifty-eight videos of resuscitations have been analyzed. After the introduction of an on-site trauma surgeon, the mean total resuscitation time was 259 seconds shorter (p = 0.03) and seven ATLS related tasks (breathing assessment, first and second IV access, EKG monitoring and abdominal, pelvic, and long bone examination; were performed significantly earlier during trauma resuscitation (p ≤ 0.05). Further, we found a significant enhancement to the adherence of six ATLS related tasks (Airway assessment, application of a rigid collar, IV access; EKG monitoring, log roll, and pronouncing results of arterial blood gas analysis; p-value ≤0.05).

CONCLUSION

Having a trauma surgeon on-site during trauma resuscitations of severely injured patients resulted in improved processes in the trauma bay. This demonstrates the need of direct involvement of trauma surgeons in institutions treating severely injured patients.