Patients can’t always be moved, endless resources aren’t always available and numerous staff can’t always be on-site. So how do staff learn to give quality trauma care in tough situations?

Trauma education series

Typically there are trauma education seminars held at VGH to simulate real-life situations. These seminars allow participants to demonstrate as a team and to practice and review who performs what task in different scenarios.

These can be difficult for rural teams to attend since they are limited by how many staff they can send and by the distance it could be to travel. These simulations also don’t always accurately reflect the environment or resources available to rural teams.

Bringing training to rural areas

To help satisfy the needs of rural teams trauma education seminars were planned for more remote locations.

These seminars will allow rural staff to work in their own environment, with their own team (or most of it) and with resources typically available at their site.

Smaller sites can operate differently from larger sites. They have less staff, different resources and aren’t always being able to transfer patients out immediately.

“They skill set has to be great since they can’t always transfer their patients out.” said Lori Baker, trauma nurse clinician at LGH

These seminars also show larger sites how the smaller sites how they do their job with what they have.

What happened in Whistler?

On November 13, 2013 Whistler was host to a trauma education seminar for the first time. There was a great turnout of seven physicians, 12 nurses and paramedics came out to practice and learn in their own environment.

This seminar helped review the management of trauma in their environment, making it pertinent to them to improve and maximize the quality of care.

All participants loved having the seminar in their surroundings, the different scenarios and being able to participate as a team.

More seminars in the future

In the spring there are more seminars being planned for Squamish and up the coast.