Queensland Trauma Education Program

Aim

The goal for QTE is to provide structured, relevant, and best practice education that supports trauma care providers across Queensland to be skilled and responsive to the needs of the injured patient.

Recognising that the educational needs and delivery platforms will differ across Queensland necessitated the creation of resources that are flexible, modular and available to be accessed at any time.

QTE has been designed to be multi-disciplinary and provide clinicians with a range of educational resources reflecting all stages of the patient journey from pre-hospital, emergency department to ward based care.

Outcomes

QTE has created an open access website to support education and learning across Queensland. Through networks involving state-wide representatives including prehospital and hospital clinicians, evidence based best-practice educational packages have been developed for use in the local environment.

Additionally, the website supports other trauma resources with links to clinical guidelines, other educational events and information.

QTE has been delivered in course format locally and in an on-the-road program, in whole day and workshop format. Success of the program has been demonstrated in a train-the-trainer format with further local course delivery.

Background

Traumatic events are a common cause for hospital presentations in Australia with 12,000 deaths per year attributable to injuries sustained as a result. Falls and transport related trauma constitute common presentations to hospital for acute care. In addition to mechanism, injury sustained in the rural and remote areas will significantly affect the resultant morbidity and mortality, with these patients having the highest rates of negative outcomes (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2019).

Following broad consultation with Queensland Health stakeholders, the need for a structured educational platform to help build a skilled and sustainable trauma care workforce across the state became apparent. The common approach of ‘one-size-fits-all’ trauma training and education programs is not an effective approach across the Queensland Hospital and Health Services (HHSs) as each have unique requirements to be able to provide high level trauma care.

Discussion

The resources include ready-made immersive scenarios, case discussions, procedural skills and role plays.

The 11 courses available are: abdominal trauma, burns trauma, chest trauma, pelvic trauma, trauma and the older person, trauma in pregnancy, traumatic brain injury, paediatric trauma, extremity trauma, Imaging trauma, and trauma teams.

New courses will be added as demand requires.

The website has received significant interest with resources frequently downloaded for use in local education delivery.

The courses and workshops delivered to date have had overwhelmingly positive feedback from their multidisciplinary participants.

Lessons learnt

The development of the program has had significant support from the Queensland Health State-wide Trauma Clinical Network, the Jamieson Trauma Institute and Clinical Skills Development Service which has led to ensuring robust educational content.

Challenges with COVID have impacted on delivery of course format and limited promotion across Queensland.

References

Injury Overview - Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (aihw.gov.au)

Further Reading

Courses and events