Understanding Kinetic Energy and Trauma

With every trauma call we run, there are two things that are almost absolute certainties. And I don’t mean that in the tongue-in-cheek sense, like, “We are certain that the elderly fall victim will live on the third floor and the elevator will be broken or nonexistent.” or, “We are certain that the nursing home C.N.A. will call for that extended inter-facility transfer 12 minutes before the end of our shift.” type of certainty. I mean…even more certain than that. When people call us for trauma, these two things are certain. 1.) Two objects collided with each other. 2.) Someone called 911. When we put these two certainties together, we can make some fair assumptions about trauma calls. Objects colliding with each other aren’t such a big deal. It happens all the time. If my fingers weren’t colliding with the keys on my computer keyboard, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. But nobody’s running off to call 911. It’s the second certainty that gives us pause. You see, people don’t start activating 911 until things collide in uncontrolled ways. Trauma calls happen when things collide together in unexpected ways and with unexpected velocity. It’s as simple as that. Now that I’ve said that, it sounds so profound that I want to write it down again and put my name under it. Here: “Trauma calls happen when things collide together in unexpected ways and with unexpected velocity.” Steve Whitehead Doesn’t it so...
Source: The EMT Spot - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: EMT Source Type: blogs