THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Envisaging quality trauma care services and ensuring the needs and rights of various trauma victims who arrive at the casualty wing of state-run Medical Colleges, the Health Department has come out with a 34-point circular. The circular, which is meant for administrators and duty medical officers of the Emergency Medicine Departments of the respective Medical Colleges, has been issued as per the recommendation of the Directorate of Medical Education.
“The circular is for streamlining the functioning of casualties and defining the roles of administrators and duty medical officers of Emergency Medicine Departments. The absence of the same has found to be creating much disarray in casualties,” said an officer at the DME. Meanwhile, the circular has come close on the heels of the decision to implement the triage system at the Emergency Departments of the district and general hospitals.
Under the system, patients arriving at the casualty wing as per their clinical urgency will be shifted to the emergency wing that is divided into three areas: red, yellow and green. The circular that stipulates the training of Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma (FAST) to the emergency medicine residents, as well as the postgraduate students of surgical specialities (General Surgery, Orthopaedics, ENT and others), also mandates FAST screening to all poly trauma patients in the casualty itself. Another major recommendation is to codify the patients thereby segregating critically ill ones and to fast track their investigations, treatment and operating time.
Other recommendations
The other recommendations include directing the institutional vigilance committees to send a monthly report regarding the functioning of casualties and emergency medicine department of the respective MCs to the DME, preparation of treatment guidelines by all departments dealing with trauma, ensuring appropriate care to a patient brought to the casualty from the first point of contact, consulting neurosurgeons on all suspected brain injury cases, making the bystander informed about the patient’s condition as well as the treatment already given or going to be given and others. The circular that will be handed over to the principals and superintendents of nine state-run Medical Colleges will soon come into being.
Guidelines for better care
Patients arriving at the casualty wing as per their clinical urgency will be shifted to the emergency wing that is divided into three areas: red, yellow and green.
Codify the patients thereby segregating critically ill ones and to fast track their investigations
The circular will be handed over to the principals and superintendents of nine state-run Medical Colleges