Page 4 - Christiana Care Focus August 2018

Cover Story |
As a Level III trauma center, Wilmington Hospital
elevates critical care in the city
Wilmington Hospital’s modernized infrastructure to treat victims of trauma has helped transform it into a front-line option for seriously injured patients and earned it state designation as a Level III trauma center. This recognition means many victims of car crashes, falls, gunshot wounds and other injuries can now be treated closer to home, making it easier on families who are visiting their loved ones or involved in their care.
“There are patients coming to Wilmington Hospital who should be able to stay in their home community,” said Linda Laskowski Jones, MS, APRN, ACNS-BC, CEN, FAWM, FAAN, vice president of emergency and trauma services and nursing leader of the Acute Medicine service line at Christiana Care Health System. “The expertise in trauma we’ve earned through our work at Christiana Hospital ideally positions us to
Cexpand our capabilities in Wilmington.”
hristiana Hospital is designated as a Level I trauma center — the highest capability and the only one of its kind in the state that
cares for both adults and children.
In the past several years, Christiana Care has been fortifying its trauma infrastructure at Wilmington Hospital. Investments in treating trauma include:
• 24-hour coverage by emergency medicine physicians, as well as the availability of an operating room, including a surgeon and anesthesiologist, within 30 minutes.
• The creation of a multidisciplinary trauma team that includes a trauma medical director, trauma surgeons, residents, nurses, advanced practice
2 CHRISTIANA CARE HEALTH SYSTEM
nurses, anesthesiologists, a full-time trauma program manager and a trauma performance improvement program manager to evaluate patient care and provide education about trauma.
• Upgrades to the blood bank for immediate availability of blood products.
Most recently, a new helipad opened on the roof of Wilmington Hospital, enabling fast access to emergency transportation to or from the hospital.
Many of these improvements benefit all
of Wilmington Hospital’s critical care patients, not only those with a traumatic injury. If a patient with an abdominal aortic aneurysm or an ectopic pregnancy needs emergency surgery, the resources of a multidisciplinary trauma team can speed their access to care.
“Trauma and critical care go hand in hand,” said Wilmington Hospital Trauma Program Medical Director Giraldo Arango, M.D., FACS.
The new designation not only affects what happens in the hospital, he said. Community education and prevention responsibilities also accompany the higher level of accreditation. Christiana
George Kennedy, EMT-B, and Ed Sawicki, EMT-B, transport a trauma patient by ambulance to Wilmington Hospital’s newly designated Level III trauma center.
Care continues to work with community partners to address the public health issues at the root of traumatic injury, including gun violence.
Wilmington Hospital joins five other Delaware hospitals with Level III trauma center designation. States designate hospitals as trauma centers, but they rely on on-site verification by site review teams
Tfrom the American College of Surgeons.
he new designation is in some ways a triumphant return for Wilmington Hospital, which has served the community
since 1888 and underwent a $210 million transformation that began in 2010. As Laskowski-Jones noted, “Though the trauma center designation transitioned
to Christiana Hospital after it was built in 1985, Wilmington Hospital was actually the original trauma center in the state.”
In the decades before 1985, Wilmington Hospital was Delaware’s premier facility for the treatment of trauma. At the time, it was part of a three-hospital system in Wilmington — along with now defunct Memorial and Wilmington General hospitals — wherein each hospital was called a “division.” Wilmington Hospital,