ABSTRACT
Trauma care aims to save the lives of injured patients and prevent further organ damage from the metabolic and phythemologic derangements caused by their injuries. To achieve this goal, a critical judgment affecting a trauma patient's survival is required every 72 seconds during the first hours of the patient's care. In-hospital errors in the management of trauma patients that ultimately lead to adverse outcomes can occur at any time during their management and begin on admission. The surgical procedure itself has been the subject of numerous safety analyses, and avoiding technical mishaps in the surgical management of individual injuries and organ systems is detailed elsewhere in this text. The risk of error during the intensive care unit (ICU) management of trauma patients is in the range of 1.7 adverse events per patient per day, of which 13% are life-threatening or fatal.
