AAST's Wednesday Cutting Newsletter

Editor's Note

Written By: Dr. Shannon M. Foster

Friends and Colleagues: 

What a start!  30 leading research papers, a dozen working committee meetings, expansive lunch sessions and an amazing Presidential Address by President Dr. Pat Reilly: Be all You Can Be.  The World Trauma Congress Keynote explaining the development of acute care surgeons in Japan by Dr. Yasuhiro Otomo also adds important perspective and future needs.The Women in Trauma Surgery reception was another packed house and becoming a marquee can’t miss event.  Build a network to keep your WITS around you (quote origin Drs. Bulger, Davis, Burlew, Brasel et all). Learn More about WITS Here. 

For those with boots in LV and at home:  the Cutting Edge is a tool to engage and connect.  Use the CE as a stepping stone to learn about your colleagues, their work, and reach out via the AAST website member profile and contact information section (is your profile up-do-date? Now is the perfect time to ensure dues and profile are current). Click Here to access your member dashboard. If you are not yet a member, it’s time! Begin your application HERE for next year!

Tomorrow will bring more of the same forward-thinking research in podium and topically wide-ranging poster sessions, (make sure to pick up your head phones!) and the AAST scholarship recipient presentations.   Whether in-person or remote, please support the work and efforts by considering financial support – donate today to the AAST Research and Education Fund.

The invited and profound Fitts Lecture by Dr. Michael Rotondo: The Academic Medical Center and the US Healthcare Economy: Altruism, Capitalism, Egoism, as previewed by the interview piece per Dr.  cannot be missed (1135-1235).  Thursdays panel session (1000), AI Valuation & Risk: A Current Toolbox for Trauma/ACS Surgeons, moderated by Dr. Rachael Callcut (a master of avant guard work, but also at diluting complex ideas and research for us regular folk!) should help translate theory into practice.

A reminder that while the main stage offerings will be available for on-demand viewing approximately 72 hours after meeting completion, the World Trauma Conference sessions will not be included in this compilation – meaning if you want to participate and learn in this format – you must physically attend.

Meet for coffee in the AAST saloon?  Date.

SMF

shannonfostermd@gmail.com

AAST Education Committee

TSACO Patient-Centered Education Collaborative

Written by: Joshua Dilday, DO and Kimberly Hendershot, MD

Imagine the most recent trauma patient you treated. Try to mentally envision the scenario surrounding the event, the initial patient presentation, and the first diagnosis that crossed your mind. Now, think of the next steps you took. Did you whisk the patient away to the operating room to stop the life-threatening hemorrhage? Maybe you escorted the patient to the CT scanner to radiographically identify an enlarging subdural hematoma. Despite your training and experience, some questions might have crept into your mind trying to overstay their welcome like estranged family members over the holidays. Being an expert in your field, you might have quelled this doubt by doing a quick search for a recent article or manuscript on the matter. You could have utilized additional resources – maybe the AAST app was your go-to confirmatory source. Armed with your expertise, gestalt, experience, and literature, you stepped up and did the job you were trained to do.

Now imagine that same scenario but from a different perspective. Try to mentally envision the scenario from the patient’s and family’s perspective. Envision how scary the ambulance sirens must have sounded, how many “big words” the trauma team used when describing the course of action, and how quickly they took you or your loved one away to get a procedure of which you had never heard. Try to imagine how helpless you might feel when the shock, fear, and confusion violently collide in your mind. And then the doctor asks you, “Do you have any questions?”

 If you were in your patient’s shoes, you would have a plethora of questions. If you were the patient’s loved one, the volume of your questions would be overwhelming. But those questions might not be given the mental clearance to come to mind at the moment, as the shock and fear paralyze any capacity for questions. Instead, the questions arise after the medical team leaves to perform surgery, start the ICU admission paperwork, or get that follow-up CT scan.

So where do patients and loved ones turn to get their questions addressed? Where can trauma or emergency general surgery patients go to educate themselves on the scary terminology the doctors just hurled their way? A quick purview of PubMed? The latest acute care surgery textbook? These are not easily available to patients or designed to empower patient-centered education. Feely available, easy-to-find, patient-centered educational resources are lacking in the acute care surgery healthcare community. This, in turn, creates a more distraught, overwhelmed, and hopeless scenario for our patients and their loved ones. We can do better to help our patients and families understand their diseases. The AAST and Trauma Surgery and Acute Care Open (TSACO) and the American Trauma Network Trauma Survivors Network (TSN) seek to provide this assistance.

 The ”Patient Education Series: Understanding Trauma and Emergency Surgery Conditions” is a collaborative effort between the AAST Education Committee, TSN, and TSACO designed to provide a public service to those who need it most: our patients and their loved ones. By joining forces, we will provide freely available, easily found, patient-centered educational resources vetted by both experts in the acute care surgery world and patient advocates. These articles, published monthly in an open-access academic journal, will provide information on common injuries, diseases, and procedures affecting our patients. Each article will be written for patients and their loved ones; health literacy will be augmented as each article will be written at an elementary school reading level.

Trauma is scary enough without the overwhelming assault of questions and misinformation threatening the peace and autonomy of our patients. Patient-centered educational resources are long overdue in the acute care surgery world. Our patients deserve to have free access to vetted information regarding their current ailments. This initiative aims to empower patients with educational resources throughout their medical journey. 

The “Patient Education Series: Understanding Trauma and Emergency Surgery Conditions” initiative kicks off later this fall with expected publication in late September/early October. The first articles will cover rib fractures, appendicitis, and tracheostomy. Additional topics will be published monthly, starting in November. TSACO has created a brand new manuscript category specifically for thi Remember the details below:

The "Patient Education Series: Understanding Trauma and Emergency Surgery Conditions" initiative will begin later this fall, with an expected publication in late September or early October. The first articles will cover rib fractures, appendicitis, and tracheostomy. Additional topics will be published monthly, starting in November. TSACO has even developed a new manuscript category specifically for this initiative. If you have questions or are interested in becoming involved, please get in touch with the team leads, Joshua Dilday (jdilday@mcw.edu) and Kimberly Hendershot (khendershot@uabmc.edu)