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A role in trauma care for advanced practice clinicians
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Advanced practice clinicians (APCs), a term used by the trauma team at LDS Hospital (LDSH) in Salt Lake City, Utah, to include physician assistants (PAs) and nurse practitioners (NPs), are increasingly being utilized to care for patients on trauma services.1-6 Traditionally, the extensive 24-hours-a day coverage needed to provide quality trauma care has been provided by surgical residents. In 2003, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education significantly reduced the number of hours that resident physicians are permitted to work in a week.7 This has forced many trauma programs to develop alternate traumacare delivery models. The quality of care provided by these alternate-care delivery models has been questioned.1 With the reduced availability of surgical residents, we hypothesized that APCs could safely provide trauma care that had traditionally been provided by those residents. This paper describes the APC trauma-care delivery model at a level I trauma hospital following the loss of surgical residents and compares patient outcomes from this new model with those in the National Trauma Data Bank (NTDB).
posted in: news, Utah
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