Take a look at the fast-paced field of emergency nursing including sub-specialties in trauma care. In this episode, we brought together a panel of emergency and trauma nurses to discuss the roles nurses can play in this field and what they can look forward to in terms of advances in case which can impact emergency departments and their patients. We were joined by Elizabeth Seislove, Director of the Trauma Program at Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pennsylvania and Randy Smith, Director of the Emergency Department at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus Ohio.

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Jamie:                  I’m here with Randy Smith and Betsy Seislove to talk about advances and changes in trauma care and emergency nursing care – what kind of things are on the horizon. I guess I’ll start with Randy talking a little bit about – nursing, in general, have come so far but emergency nursing really has advanced right alongside of all the other things going on in the nursing career path in general. Many aspects of emergency care, the nurse is just an integral part of the process in assessment, in providing treatment and also instructions for someone that is not going to be your patient maybe ever again. There are some things that have changed over the years. What have you seen come along that has really changed the way that nurses have interacted with their patients and advanced the way that emergency nurses and trauma nurses care for their patients?

Respondent:          I guess, from my perspective, I don’t know that up until maybe the last five, ten years or so that you [won’t] to see trauma nursing really had a true identity. I think that the certification piece, that’s really evolved the advanced training piece of that. It really helped to drive emergency nursing and trauma forward. I’ll give you an example. I know here at Nationwide Children’s, on the trauma side for example, we developed what is called a “Trauma Nurse Leader” role. This is a nurse that is chosen by their peer group as well as recommendations from our physician colleagues to go to one-year internship in trauma nursing. These TNLs have really drive to include the calling of the level of the trauma here at Nationwide Children’s. That’s certainly wasn’t the case five years ago. I don’t know that there really was a lot of value given to the trauma nurses in their role to not only in the initiation of the trauma but the care of the patients. A lot of things are being initiated and driven by the TNLs. I think we have that kind of a role that’s carved out because I don’t always think that nursing has done a good job of carving out roles for themselves. At times, I think [unintelligible] gets placed upon us because of necessity. I think we’ve been much more proactive as a profession to take more ownership in carving out and driving those roles inside the profession versus from a multidisciplinary group as a result of a [root] cause or unfortunately a bad outcome.

Jamie:                  Betsy, what are your thoughts?

Betsy:                   Well, I have to kind of echo some of what Randy has just spoken about his institution. What we did about – it was probably about five or six years ago – we also identified that trauma is such a complex disease process that if you throw a nurse back in a trauma bay and expect them to know exactly what to do without a lot of experience behind them, they felt loss. The team felt loss. What we did is we put together what we call our “Core Trauma Nursing Team.” They again are the select few nurses who are identified by their peers an...