The Trauma Committee is striving to improve the medical care provided to trauma victims in the UAE. After introducing the ATLS courses for doctors, the Pre - Hospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS) course for personnel involved in the Pre Hospital care of trauma victims has been introduced.
HISTORY OF THE PHTLS
In 1981, shortly after the development of the ATLS® Course, the ACS/COT, and the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) entered into a cooperative agreement to develop an ATLS® Course for pre-hospital providers. This was appropriately named "Pre-hospital Trauma Life Support" (PHTLS). By 1984, the first course was run in New Orleans, USA. Since that time, it has been brought into fourteen other countries and trained a total of approximately 200,000 EMTs, paramedics, nurses, physicians, civilian and military.
As indicated in the studies on the effects of the ATLS® Course and the PHTLS, the PHTLS makes the emergency health care providers better prepared to treat severely injured trauma patients; the before and after analysis demonstrated that the addition of the PHTLS to the training of physicians produces a significant increase in trauma survival.
In the United States, the PHTLS is nationally endorsed. It is widely adopted, as a continuing educational program, by hospitals, educational institutions and EMS agencies. In addition, PHTLS can be incorporated into initial and refresher EMT and paramedic courses.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
The primary goals of the PHTLS are as follows:
to provide a description of the physiology, patho-physiology, and kinetics of injury;
to provide an understanding of the need for a rapid assessment of the trauma patient;
to advance the participant's level of knowledge in regard to examination and diagnostic skills;
to advance the participant's level of competence in regard to specific pre-hospital trauma intervention skills; and
to provide an overview and establish a management method for the pre-hospital care of the multi-system trauma patient.
