Online practice scenarios for trauma

Worried by their dithering the last time we had an accident victim, I just took our docs through a bit of trauma training. We don't have the materials to conduct a formal ATLS course, nor does our rural Indonesian clinic have the tools to conduct full trauma care, but we can certainly review basics. So we went over the primary and secondary surveys, as well as important concepts like resuscitation and teamwork. This is their chance to learn and practice, since they tell me that all the spots in Jakarta ATLS courses are booked till 2012.

Fun with moulage will take place in a few days (my long-suffering fellow volunteer, Dr. Bobby, will play the role of victim, with lipstick or perhaps chewed-up betel nut to denote his injuries). In the meantime, the docs asked for reading material. I wish I could find a legally downloadable ATLS manual online, but no dice. Still, there are excellent basic reviews by eMedicine and UpToDate (subscription only for the latter, alas), and this collection of interactive trauma cases online. They're free of charge, courtesy Trauma.org, a website dedicated to global trauma care that is well worth exploring. The cases are written in idiomatic (and very funny) English, so they might not be ideal for non-native speakers, but they do review important basics in a painless way and might make good moulage scenarios for people teaching trauma care in a low-resource environment. I plan to create teaching cases based on some of them. It should be lots of fun, though for poor Dr. Bobby's sake I don't think we'll be strictly following the "Fingers and tubes in every orifice" rule.