EDINBURG — Improving their ability to treat patients such as accident victims, DHR Health unveiled a trauma resuscitation unit, the first such unit in the region that enables that hospital to have a dedicated space for these patients needing specialized care.
Physicians, nurses and other frontline workers celebrated the debut of the hospital’s trauma resuscitation unit which will eliminate the struggles of having trauma patients spread out throughout the emergency department.
“Every emergency room gets trauma patients and they go to different parts,” explained Dr. Rick Martinez, chief of surgery at DHR Health. “You have maybe two designated trauma beds for the really sick ones — the ones who are seriously injured — and then the less seriously injured get separated out all over the ER, so then your trauma surgeon’s going from one part of the ER to another part of the ER and the nurses’ communication is not as good as here where all the trauma patients will be in one space.”
“So that was the goal of this,” Martinez added, “to make it a little compact, make the care easier, more efficient and try to get the patient better taken care of.”
The unit is equipped with three full trauma resuscitation bays on one side and an additional seven beds on the other side of the room where they can place patients who have been stabilized but are waiting to be seen by other specialists. Those seven beds are less for resuscitation but can be used for that if needed.
“We want to have the capabilities to do whatever other big cities — like San Antonio, Houston — what they have on their level, there’s no reason we can’t do it right here so this trauma resuscitation unit is just that,” said Dr. Jeffrey Skubic, trauma medical director.
“It is the culmination of so many people’s work and effort to bring this together including comprehensive injury coverage,” Skubic added. “Without all these guys participating, all of them, we wouldn’t be able to take care of these patients, but now that we can, we can do it in a place where we can take care of all of them, even if a bus should roll over, god forbid, or something like that, we can take care of a large amount of patients at once.”
He added that the resuscitation bays had plenty of room for them to perform procedures and were equipped with ultrasound and catheters.
Additionally, Skubic noted the room had a digital blood bank refrigerator that contained whole blood as well as other blood products and had special capabilities.
“As soon as we take blood out of it or activate the massive transfusion protocol, that data’s immediately transmitted to our blood bank; they start sending more,” Skubic said, “so this room has the capacity to take care of all those kinds of things.”
“It’s the very first kind of trauma room, big open concept resuscitation unit, in the region, in South Texas, and so we’re very proud of it,” he added. “We hope now that the Rio Grande Valley, South Texas, has a trauma resuscitation unit, not just DHR.”
