The aim of the PTRC is to improve the knowledge, skills and confidence of healthcare workers providing care to severely injured children
Right now, clinicians in Sudan and Tigray are treating several children per day badly injured by explosive devices left on the ground as a result of conflict in the region. Many more do not make it to hospital due to the severity of their injuries and a lack of pre-hospital care resources.
WHO statistics show that training lay first responders and paramedics costs just $7 per life year gained.
We are therefore looking to raise funds urgently to develop bystander response and pre-hospital care educational materials as part of the Paediatric Trauma Resuscitation Course along with the Paediatric Blast Injury Partnership. Money raised will also support both UK and local clinicians to deliver this vital education in these regions as well as continuing the development of the in-hospital management course materials.
PTRC
According to Save the Children “More children are living in conflict zones than any other time in the last 20 years, with approximately 449 million children – one child out of six globally – living in conflict in 2021”. These children are at constant risk of injury due to these conflicts as well as the indirect effects of conflict – including malnutrition, disease and the breakdown of healthcare, water and sanitation.
As a result of rising numbers of injured children requiring care and a lack of available training in how to manage these cases the Paediatric Blast Injury Field Manual was released in 2019 to support clinicians in Syria. The manual provides information on the management of an injured child from the very point of injury, with by-stander care provision, all the way through damage control surgery and on to the rehabilitation and post-injury psycho-social support necessary for the child. It is an open access, free to use resource that is applicable to all settings.
With the field manual becoming more recognised and utilised around the world the aim of the PTRC is to help clinicians take the information within it and improve their skill and confidence in applying it.
It is well known that even when physicians are able to recite knowledge of patient assessment and management in a written format and perform well in exams this often does not transmit to putting that knowledge into practice in stressful or time-pressured situations. Using simulated patients to develop knowledge in a practical, hands-on manner is a well-recognised technique for addressing this issue.
Whilst there are several excellent paediatric life support/resuscitation courses available to clinicians around the world (APLS/PALS/EPALS etc) the attention to traumatic injuries in these courses is limited to a short lecture and often no practical element. Similarly there are many well established trauma courses (ATLS/ETC) which provide little or no insight into providing trauma care for children as compared to adults. Even the few paediatric trauma courses that are available through various bespoke providers are prohibitively expensive for most people to undertake.
There is therefore a gap in the available training resources for affordable, scalable, paediatric trauma care education. The PTRC aims to address this by providing open access materials focussed specifically on the care of the injured child and supporting the development of clinicians around the world to be able to deliver these materials to others in their own context.
The mission of the PTRC is to improve the knowledge, skills and confidence of healthcare workers providing care to severely injured children in a free to access model.
The first stage of the PTRC development is to try to address the care provided on the initial arrival of the child to hospital to minimise secondary injury and stabilise children so that more have the possibility to survive to the point of requiring surgery and rehabilitation.
The aim is to therefore deliver a practical training course using simulated patients and structured, knowledge based debriefs to embed not only the theoretical knowledge required but also the practical manner in which to improve the delivery of care.
The target audience are all members of the multi-disciplinary team that might be involved in the initial in-hospital management of a patient in the ED (Doctors, Nurses, Healthcare assistants etc).
To scale this model we aim to make all resources available for use online and provide training for care providers in the techniques used in the course delivery so that they can themselves pass on the training to others.
This project closed unsuccessfully on 3rd August 2023