How sure are you that your positive is a negative?

This month our clinical focus is on trauma, so we are starting with the East of England Trauma Network (EoETN), as a reminder of how it can help you with our most seriously-injured patients.

Since its launch in 2012, the trauma pathway has been used by all patient-facing clinicians, from ambulance crews to HEMS teams. A simple trauma triage tool (TTT) was created to support staff to consistently identify a potential major trauma positive (MTPOS) patient and to ensure a safe decision is made about where to take the patient.

There are three physiological and five anatomical triggers on the TTT; if your trauma patient triggers one or more of these then they are classified as MTPOS in the pre-hospital setting.

To ensure the TTT is fit for purpose and meets our needs for major trauma patients, it is regularly evaluated, but we need to help this process by making sure we use it correctly. This includes contacting the critical care desk (CCD) on channel 202 of your digital radio to also report major trauma negative (MTNEG) patients, so when you have actively used the TTT and the patient(s) do not meet any of the physiological or anatomical triggers. 

Identifying and reporting both MTPOS and MTNEG patients is really useful for the EoETN and has multiple benefits for the patient you are treating at the time and for the future of the pathway and the patients it serves. 

If you have any questions surrounding the EoETN or the TTT then please leave your comment below; if necessary, a Q&A will be created and published on Need to Know next week.

Published 7th May 2015