Anaesthetic Trauma and Critical Care

For many years the ATLS course has been the only dedicated trauma course available for medics. Although this course has proved invaluable in providing all grades and specialities, with a framework by which to tackle any kind of trauma situation, it has never claimed to be perfect and merely offers one way of dealing with trauma. In view of this our course aims not to replace ATLS, but rather to be complementary and to offer an alternative. Specifically designed for those with anaesthetic skills and their working colleagues, ATACC is suitable for those with and without an ATLS qualification. We aim to provide candidates with an overall training in trauma care but we also aim to extend the teaching into areas specific to anaesthetists. As such we can describe techniques and management normally excluded from ATLS, due to lack of time.
Similarly, we are able to omit simple airway skills and some of the less important surgical skills, which are unlikely to be used by an anaesthetist.

The course itself continues to develop in many ways. We continue to keep the manual as up to date as possible (4th edition out in October 2001), the course content is regularly re-evaluated and improved and we are forging stronger links with the emergency services, especially Lanchashire Fire and Rescue Service, who now have their own modified version of ATACC (RTACC, Rescue Trauma and Critical Care). This course is designed for paramedical groups such as fire fighters, paramedics, military medics, police armed response units etc.

ATACC is actively involved in many new developments in trauma such as small volume resuscitation, hypertonic solutions, specialist patient transport systems and evaluation of specialist rescue teams. In addition, we have recently formed a Medical Rescue Team, trained in special rescue skills and we have already provided medical support for the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

These are exciting times and through this course we can work alongside ATLS and hopefully push and improve standards of trauma care in each of our own areas. We do not claim that the ATACC course is perfect, howerver we believe it offers an up to date, evidence based, quality alternative to ATLS, with a definite bias towards anaesthesia. The course has gained the approval of the Royal College of Anaesthetists for CME purposes and has been awarded 10 CME points.

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