• Jefferson Hayre, Colin Rouse, James French, Jacqueline Fraser, Ian Watson, Sue Benjamin, Allison Chisholm, George Stoica, Beth Sealy, Mete Erdogan, Robert Green, and Paul Atkinson.
• *Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick,St. John,NB.
• Can J Emerg Med. 2018 Mar 1; 20 (2): 191-199.

ObjectivesWhile the use of formal trauma teams is widely promoted, the literature is not clear that this structure provides improved outcomes over emergency physician delivered trauma care. The goal of this investigation was to examine if a trauma team model with a formalized, specialty-based trauma team, with specific activation criteria and staff composition, performs differently than an emergency physician delivered model. Our primary outcome was survival to discharge or 30 days.MethodsAn observational registry-based study using aggregate data from both the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia trauma registries was performed with data from April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2013. Inclusion criteria included patients 16 years-old and older who had an Injury Severity Score greater than 12, who suffered a kinetic injury and arrived with signs of life to a level-1 trauma centre.Results266 patients from the trauma team model and 111 from the emergency physician model were compared. No difference was found in the primary outcome of proportion of survival to discharge or 30 days between the two systems (0.88, n=266 vs. 0.89, n=111; p=0.8608).ConclusionsWe were unable to detect any difference in survival between a trauma team and an emergency physician delivered model.

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