Paper: Combat Casualty Care Course/Basic Training in Trauma Skills/Got Trauma Training? (40th Biennial Convention (October 31st- November 4th, 2009))

Monday, November 2, 2009: 4:10 PM

Meredith Addison, RN, MSN
Indiana Rural Health Association, Indiana Emergency Nurses Association, Hillsdale, IN

Learning Objective 1: Discuss basic trauma skills training as it relates to various practice settings and the availability of such training courses.

Learning Objective 2: Recognize disparities in provision of basic trauma skills training secondary to availability and resources.

Injuries come many times without warning and kill people who are in their prime of life. "Trauma centers and trauma specialists are critical components of our public health infrastructure and must be well-equipped and staffed to meet trauma emergencies" says Richard Carmona, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.S. Vice-Admiral, U.S. Surgeon General. As written in the Rural Monitor Fall 2007, "Organized trauma care systems are critical to reducing mortality and morbidity in rural areas, where nearly 60 per cent of all trauma deaths occur."

And yet, as a "baby nurse" starting into my nursing career in 1979 I was put on night shift in a critical access hospital. In caring for my fellow community members I didn't know what I didn't know until I was mobilized for basic training in the United States Army Reserves and attended the Combat Casualty Care Course at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. This course opened my eyes to the standardized approach for assessment, planning, intervention, and evaluation of injured patients. I came back to my local community facility eager to share my enlightenment only to find that the disparities of healthcare make access to such basic trauma training skills available only to those who are aware of their existence, willing to search out a course, and often necessitate the caregiver to provide the financial wherewithal to gain access into a course once located and accessed for attendance.

Still in 2009 a wide variance exists from mandatory preliminary standardized basic trauma skills training all the way to "do the best you can with what you get".

There is a better way. Let us Share and Care to Get Us There: Basic Trauma Skills Training for Rural emergency nurses.

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