Trauma Disease Introduction:
The mechanical damage caused by an external force to the body is referred as trauma. The trauma patient is described as “an injured patient who requires diagnosis in time and treatment of injuries by highly health care professionals supported by appropriate resources, in order to reduce or eliminate the risk of permanent disability or death.”
The third leading cause of death in United States is Trauma. It is also the leading cause of mortality for patients between 1 and 44 years of age. Through a well studied distribution, mortality after death can be characterized which identifies three time periods during which major deaths occur. Approximately 50% of deaths occur immediately. Through only injury prevention these deaths can be avoided. And during initial hours post injury, approximately 30%of deaths occur. Prevention of these deaths is the goal of modern trauma care. And finally 20% of deaths occur late. These late complications can be prevented by improved early management of injury and associated shock.
The word trauma is derived from the Greek work “Tpavma” which means physical injury. The damage to the body which is caused by a sudden disclosure to environmental energy that is beyond the body flexibility is defined as trauma or injury. The involved energy can be in a number of forms. The most common form is the mechanical energy which accounts for the great majority of all injuries. Vehicle crashes and gunshot wounds are the examples of these kinds of injuries. Traumatic injury can also result from other forms of energy like het, ionizing radiation and electricity. These occur less commonly.
Special needs of the individual affected by trauma:
The individual who was affected from trauma has special needs than the affected individuals requiring rehabilitation. There are special needs to trauma patients, in addition to the specific needs to each disability. Sometimes an individual have multiple injuries. Some of these injuries may be hidden or some may be undiscovered.
If multiple injuries are present, then there should be an increase in the need for better coordination of care as more specialists will become a part of the care team and multiple injuries are treated simultaneously. The trauma patients will be younger. Although younger patients have more medical prospects, they also have many issues which require more care than the older patients. For many traumatically injured patients, return to work is an important issue. They have younger families and responsibilities.
Training methods:
Many obstructions are there in training medics, nurses, medical students to present trauma care skills. These include emergent nature of the procedures, availability of clinical material, instructor time, and anatomic knowledge. Each of these obstructions is addressed by virtual reality simulators. A unique national asset, the national capital area medical simulation centre teaches trauma care skills to medical students by not only using state-of-the-art simulators but also adapts existing technology and develops new simulations in order to teach these skills. Standard trauma training is performed on mannequins or anesthetized animals.
Constant presence of an instructor is required. VR applications are treated as standalone devices which have built-in situations and multiple patients to increase variations and level of skills are required to complete successfully the required steps of the trauma procedure. To teach trauma skills, commercial VR simulators include UltraSim ultra sound simulator, limb trauma simulator and human patient simulator. Based on HT cathsim two additional simulators are developed. They are diagnostic peritonel lavage simulator and pericardiocentesis simulator.
The focus of the surgical simulation laboratory is training resuscitation principles and techniques to the students of Uniformed Services University and at the same time engaging in research in order to improve the training. A, B, C’s of the American college of surgeons advanced trauma life support course should be followed by the initial trauma patient. Establishing an airway for the patient is the first step if the patient is comatose, obtunded, or has an obstructed airway. To secure the patient’s airway, there are several methods but time is the main challenge. Surgical airway is the best approach, if less invasive methods fail or not appropriate.