Trauma Surgery Scope Of Practice

[Alex9871]

I have a few quick questions for you guys.
(1)What unit would a Trauma surgeon primarily round on ( work on).
(2) Will he/she treat and operate on and treat pediatric patients.
(3) Would they be able to round treat patients in the ED just as Emergency Medicine Physicians, if there are not trauma's arriving or in the ED.

Thank You!!!!! 🙂

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[TraumaLlamaMD]

At my school, the trauma team had their own floor and service for trauma patients. It was not a pediatric hospital, so there were typically no children on the service, though we did get the occasional teenager who wound up coming our way and staying on the service.

At night, the residents on trauma service took consults from the ER, so you might find them closing a laceration that wasn't necessarily a trauma, or evaluating a patient with abdominal pain in the ED - but you certainly wouldn't find them working up a suspected MI, or anything else outside the wheelhouse of surgery. They are not trained as general EM doctors (and while we did have EM residents who rotated through the trauma service, they didn't see non-surgical patients in the ER while they were with our service).

 

[Smurfette]

1. any floor with a trauma patient---ICU, step-down, floor, trauma bay....
2. depends on the policy at the institution. My training institution had a cutoff of age 13; 12 and under went to ped surgeons, 13 and up were done by the trauma service. A really sick, about to die kid would of course be managed by trauma until ped surg arrived. Some places may have different cut-offs, or have the trauma guys deal with all peds patients if there aren't full time peds surgeons there (although peds patients may be diverted instead to a pediatric trauma center per EMS protocols). Burns in kids of all ages always went to the burn service (a division of trauma).
3. No, just trauma patients as well as surgical patients that the EM guys call them about.

 

[ACSurgeon]

Trauma surgeons do some or all of the following:
- trauma surgery (includes a lot of non-operative management of the multiply injured trauma patient)

- acute care or emergency general surgery

- surgical critical care (rounding as the intensivist in surgical icu on trauma and other surgical patients).

- elective general surgery

- burns