Quality Trauma System

Traumatic injury accounts for 11% of global mortality and is a leading cause of disability (Sharma, Krug and Lozano, 2000). Trauma affects society on a physical, psychological and economical level (Lyons et al., 2010). Quality trauma care requires an integrated and resourced trauma system. The aim of a trauma system is to facilitate the timely treatment of severely injured patients where resources are available for their optimal management and rehabilitation (Celso et al., 2006). Once the trauma patient has arrived at the trauma centre, in-hospital trauma systems, such as trauma teams, are activated and facilitate systematic clinical assessment and ongoing patient care (Liberman et al., 2005; Teixaeira et al., 2007). Quality and effective initial assessment and resuscitation of trauma patients require a multidisciplinary trauma team led by medical and nursing staff (Cole and Crichton, 2006)

Trauma triage systems seek to identify and provide rapid treatment for the most severely injured trauma patients, while at the same time identifying less injured patients in need of only basic care (Cook, 2001). However, a trauma teams activation is down to personal

However, as mentioned before, activation of a full trauma team consisting of clinicians from multiple specialities is time and labour intensive and many patients who activate trauma team response do not require the input of such a team, often resulting in them being discharged home from the emergency department (Au and Holdgate, 2010). In contrast, other patients may require immediate input from specialist clinicians and the assessment of a team skilled in the principles of Advanced Trauma Life Support (Kortbeek et al.,