Abstract
In January 2017, the Emergency Trauma Advocate (ETA) program was piloted at our Level 1 trauma center to promote patient advocacy, particularly in pediatric patients. The goal was to empower emergency department nurses by improving their knowledge base through interactive didactic sessions. This study reviews the preliminary findings of the program. Surveys were administered after each teaching session to participating ETA nurses to determine their personal academic interests and how to improve the program. We then performed a retrospective review of pediatric trauma admissions from January 2017 through April 2017 to delineate the most common injury patterns. Survey responses demonstrated the greatest nursing interest in learning critical care (n = 11), orthopedic management (n = 11), and neurosurgical trauma education (n = 9). During this study period, 113 pediatric patients arrived and had a mean age of 7.8 +/- 5.2 years. The most common injury patterns were orthopedic (n = 38) and neurosurgical (n = 28), and 35 patients required critical care management. Bivariate analysis revealed a significant and positive relationship between injury frequency and educational interests (R2 = 98.8%, p = .0057). A nurse's interest in educational topics directly correlates with recent pediatric trauma injury patterns. Future work should focus on determining what impact the ETA program has had on pediatric outcomes.