About Us
The Trauma team at MedStar Washington Hospital Center is dedicated to providing comprehensive trauma care for patients and their families. Some facts about the Trauma center:
- The Trauma center is verified by the American College of Surgeons as a Level I facility, providing the top level of trauma care.
- We evaluate 2,200 to 3,000 trauma patients each year in MedSTAR, a special dedicated trauma receiving unit with its own ambulance and helicopter entrance.
- The entire Trauma team, including a trauma surgeon, emergency physician and many others, is available 24 hours each day, seven days a week.
- The Trauma team at the Hospital Center treats injured patients from D.C., as well as the surrounding neighborhoods in Maryland and Virginia. We accept transfers from as far away as Delaware and Pennsylvania. Transport can be arranged from a referring hospital or from the site of the injury.
Trauma Education
The Trauma program at MedStar Washington Hospital Center has an enormous impact on trauma education in the nation’s capital. We have three rotating teams of surgical residents that comprise the Trauma service; one from the hospital’s own training program, one from Georgetown University and one from the Uniformed Services Health Science University. Students from these programs as well as many others from around the world rotate on our service.
Military Collaboration and Training
Our collaboration with the military goes beyond training their surgeons in trauma care. Military attending trauma surgeons collectively take up to eight nights per month of trauma on-call at the Hospital Center, keeping their skills up during peacetime, and helping train military doctors during conflict. We have a long history of collaborating on important and innovative research, resulting in many original publications.
Prevention of Trauma
The Hospital Center is actively involved in treating injury and in preventing it. A full-time injury prevention coordinator is on staff to provide education and program development on injury prevention. We speak at local schools and community events, and participate in driving safety and child restraint awareness programs. It is part of our mission to gather data on local trauma patterns, and find the best, most effective ways of preventing these injuries.
What is a Level I Trauma Center?
Following are some the criteria that must be met, in order to be certified as a Level I Trauma Center:
- A hospital equipped to handle any level of severity of trauma
- A variety of specialists who are equipped to manage trauma 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including orthopaedists, neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons and anesthesiologists
- A trauma surgeon is on-site and on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week
- An operating room is ready at all times for trauma cases
- An ongoing research program
- Active in running educational programs to prevent trauma
- A disaster preparedness plan