21 - Trauma Patient Assessment

Trauma Patient Assessment is the twenty-first title of Action Training Systems' Emergency Medical Responder (EMR) series, and SkillsTrain, the authorised ATS distributor in South Africa, supplies it locally as part of that series. It gives the responder a structured way to triage and assess trauma patients by mechanism of injury.

The title describes the National Triage Trauma Protocol guidelines for categorising trauma patients, so a responder can sort the seriously injured from the walking wounded. It describes the common mechanisms of injury in both adults and children, the forces that cause predictable patterns of harm. It then demonstrates the assessment of trauma patients both with and without a significant mechanism of injury, so a responder applies the right depth of assessment to the situation in front of them. The module is aimed at emergency medical responders and first responders who reach a patient before an ambulance crew who need a repeatable method under pressure at a trauma scene.

The content follows the United States National EMS Education Standards for the Emergency Medical Responder level. As an Action Training Systems EMS title it sits in a library that ATS accredits through CAPCE, the Commission on Accreditation for Prehospital Continuing Education, where each online interactive course carries one hour of continuing education and counts as Distributive Education under the National Continued Competency Program of the NREMT, the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians. It uses the ATS teach, test and track model: the learner is assessed as they work through the material, and any section answered incorrectly is replayed before they can move on. The programme runs about 18 minutes and SkillsTrain supplies it on USB or as a classroom streaming option, on its own or as part of the complete 25 title Emergency Medical Responder (EMR) series, with an online interactive version deployable to a learning management system (LMS).

Within the same Emergency Medical Responder (EMR) series, SkillsTrain also supplies Head & Spine Injuries, Abdominal Trauma and Chest & Multi-System Trauma, so the related modules can be studied together as one progression.