Trauma Education

Through our customized STOP THE BLEED® course for prehospital providers, participants gain the ability to recognize life-threatening bleeding and intervene effectively. This interactive session takes first responders through the basic tenant of external hemorrhage recognition and intervention in the prehospital setting. Eligible for 3 elective CEUs.

NAEMT’s Prehospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS) is the leading continuing education program for prehospital emergency trauma care.  PHTLS is accredited by CAPCE and recognized by NREMT.  The mission of PHTLS is to promote excellence in trauma patient management by all providers involved in the delivery of prehospital care.  PHTLS is appropriate for EMTs, paramedics, nurses, physician assistants, physicians, and other prehospital providers. PHTLS is developed by NAEMT in cooperation with the American College of Surgeons’ Committee on Trauma.

PHTLS courses improve the quality of trauma care and decrease mortality. The program is based on a philosophy stressing the treatment of the multi-system trauma patient as a unique entity with specific needs. PHTLS promotes critical thinking as the foundation for providing quality care. It is based on the belief that, given a good fund of knowledge and key principles, EMS practitioners are capable of making reasoned decisions regarding patient care.

The course utilizes the internationally recognized PHTLS textbook and covers the following topics:

• Physiology of life and death
• Scene assessment
• Patient assessment
• Airway
• Breathing, ventilation and oxygenation
• Circulation, hemorrhage and shock
• Patients with disabilities
• Patient simulations

NAEMT’s Tactical Emergency Casualty Care (TECC) course teaches EMS practitioners and other prehospital providers how to respond to and care for patients in a civilian tactical environment.

 The course presents the three phases of tactical care and integrates parallel EMS nomenclature:

1. Hot Zone/Direct Threat Care that is rendered while under attack or in adverse conditions.
2. Warm Zone/Indirect Threat Care that is rendered while the threat has been suppressed but may resurface at any point.
3. Cold Zone/Evacuation Care that is rendered while the casualty is being evacuated from the incident site.

The 16-hour classroom course includes all new patient simulations and covers the following topics:

• Hemorrhage control including immediate action drills for tourniquet application throughout the course
• Complete coverage of the MARCH assessment
• Surgical airway control and needle decompression
• Strategies for treating wounded responders in threatening environments
• Caring for pediatric patients
• Techniques for dragging and carrying victims to safety
• Active shooter event scenario session.

NAEMT’s TECC course is endorsed by the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, is consistent with the current guidelines established by the Committee on Tactical Emergency Casualty Care.

This one-day program combines didactic lecture with skills sessions and clinical scenarios to teach and reinforce the basic medical interventions of hemorrhage control using tourniquets or direct pressure in combination with wound packing (with plain gauze or topical hemostatic agents), management of open pneumothorax (sucking chest wounds), recognition of tension pneumothorax, and simple airway maneuvers to open an obstructed airway. It is intended for non-EMS prehospital responders.

The Advanced Trauma Life Support course emphasizes the rapid initial assessment and primary treatment of injured patients, starting at the time of injury and continuing through initial assessment, lifesaving intervention, reevaluation, stabilization, and, when needed, transfer to a trauma center. The course consists of pre-course and post-course tests, core content, interactive discussions, scenario-driven skill stations, lectures, interactive case presentations, discussions, development of lifesaving skills, practical laboratory experiences, and a final performance proficiency evaluation.

Upon completing the course, participants should feel confident in implementing the skills taught in the ATLS course. St. Joseph’s University Medical Center currently provides the ATLS 1-Day Hybrid Course.

Participants in this course learn endovascular techniques such as resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta (REBOA) to temporize life-threatening hemorrhage. The BEST course offers hands-on training with perfused cadavers including ultrasound-guided common femoral arterial (CFA) access, percutaneous and open cannulation of the CFA, and CFA repair.

The ASSET course uses human cadavers to teach surgical exposure of anatomic structures that when injured may pose a threat to life or limb.  A course manual is distributed to students prior to taking the course to provide an overview of key surgical exposures in five key anatomic areas: neck, chest, abdomen and pelvis, and upper and lower extremities. The one-day cadaver-based course follows this modular, body region approach. Each section begins with a short case-based overview, followed by a hands-on exposure performed by students under the guidance of faculty. The student-to-faculty ratio is low, allowing extensive faculty guidance and interaction with students. The student assesses his or her ability to perform each exposure independently and is evaluated on knowledge and technical skills.

Every second counts when stabilizing life-threatening trauma cases. This course, taught by qualified emergency nurses, prepares you with the knowledge, critical thinking skills and hands-on training needed to provide high-quality, trauma nursing care. After completing this course, you will be able to properly assess and implement evidence-based interventions to improve outcomes for your patients.

In this course, you will learn:

• The latest trauma nursing practice recommendations
• Systematic assessment and application of care
• Rapid identification of life-threatening injuries

Accurate assessment of a child with acute illness or injury requires special knowledge and skills. This course, taught by qualified emergency nurses, is designed to provide the core-level pediatric knowledge and psychomotor skills needed to properly assess and implement evidence-based interventions to improve outcomes for this high-risk patient population.

In this course, you will learn:

• The latest pediatric emergency nursing practice recommendations
• Systematic assessment and application of care
• Education that can applied to every pediatric patient you treat
• The newly released 5th Edition includes added content on dermatologic and environmental emergencies, human trafficking, food allergies and more.