Trauma Assessment and Management

Course overview

Trauma patient care requires a systematic approach to rapidly identify and intervene when a patient presents with life-threatening injuries. This approach allows the trauma nurse to follow a pre-defined algorithm to reduce patient harm and improve outcomes. The goal of the primary survey is to rapidly assess the patient and treat life-threatening injuries (Planas et al., 2021). The secondary survey is designed to obtain a thorough history, manage pain, complete a full assessment to identify other injuries, and obtain other diagnostic studies (Parker & Magnusson, 2016).