Clinical: Trauma

CDC’s most recent national counts show about 214,000 TBI-related hospitalizations (2020) and nearly 69,000 TBI-related deaths (2023), roughly 190 deaths every day, and many survivors live with lifelong disabilities. In those first moments following impact, the EMS care that you provide is a major factor in your patient's outcome. Hyperventilate? Intubate? Permissive hypotension? Do you know what to do? Using case studies, evidence-based guidelines and a common-sense approach, this program gives you strategies for the prehospital management of traumatic brain injuries in a way that real-world medics and EMTs can use in real-world trauma settings.

Good vehicle extrication demands a unique collaboration between rescue and emergency medical personnel. Incorporating key victim assessment information in the extrication size-up will improve your strategic and tactical plans. To save a patient (not just chop up a vehicle), rescue and EMS must understand each other’s jobs and work together effectively. This program uses a real-world approach to incorporate EMS care considerations in the extrication strategy and shows how most critical trauma encountered in vehicle collisions can be managed quickly and effectively by first responders. This program will help you make better strategic extrication decisions and more safely deliver immediate life-saving treatment, reducing time from patient contact to patient removal to patient surgery.

The drugs have changed. So should our response. We're no longer dealing with predictable opioid overdoses or straightforward stimulant intoxication. Today's synthetic street drugs, super-meth, novel fentanyl analogs, synthetic cannabinoids, and designer hallucinogens, produce violent, bizarre, and physiologically chaotic presentations that don't respond to our standard playbook. Patients are awake but combative on naloxone. Sedation backfires. Restraint escalates the crisis. And the scene itself is often more dangerous than we anticipate.

This session provides a 2026 update on what's actually circulating, what it does to patients, and what works when traditional management fails. We'll work through real-world case studies that show how these drugs present differently, why some interventions make things worse, and how to coordinate response across EMS, fire, and law enforcement when the scene is dynamic and the patient is uncontrollable.

But we're not stopping at scene management. We'll also discuss what's being done, and what could be done, at the community and legislative level to reduce the demand for emergency response in the first place. Harm reduction, diversion programs, and innovative public health strategies are reshaping how some systems approach addiction. You'll leave with both tactical tools for today's calls and a clearer picture of where this crisis is heading.

Regular medical and recreational use of cannabis is on the rise among all age groups. In most cases this is associated with few side effects, but some regular users experience a wildly paradoxical reaction. While cannabis will normally suppress nausea and pain and stimulate appetite, weekly cannabis use can sometimes produce severe cramping, abdominal pain, vomiting, and nausea known as cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS). In this program we explore the pathophysiology of CHS, discuss presentations that EMS may encounter, and review the current diagnostic and treatment criteria. Researchers estimate that cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome may affect as many as 2.75 million people in the US each year. Since a dedicated diagnosis code took effect in October 2025, the share of emergency department visits coded as CHS has more than tripled, which the CDC attributes largely to better recognition. With complications of CHS including kidney failure, electrolyte imbalance and skin burns on patients seeking self-treatment, can EMS providers afford to be unprepared?

Pinned in a car for 4 hours, trapped in a building collapse for 12, fallen on the floor for 24, immobile in a rescue harness for 10 minutes. Each of these patients may be experiencing different, but deadly aspects of crush injury, crush syndrome, rhabdomyolysis or suspension trauma. Why are some victims okay when trapped, but when we rescue them, they die? Where do field amputations come into play? What protocols do you need in place to deal with them? Real-world case-studies bring this presentation to life as it answers these questions and more by bringing you evidence based best practices, model protocols, and resources that you can use to treat these high-pressure and high-profile patients.

We’ve all heard the legends of trauma care. “the ABCs are top priority!”, “Mechanism of Injury Matters!”, “Never remove a dressing!”, “Hyperventilate that head injury!” But what happens when what you were taught no longer matches what science says? Taking a look at the Top Ten Trauma Myths and Legends this program evaluates the strength of the science behind each recommendation as well as how they might be implemented in different EMS systems. Getting past “we’ve always done it this way”, attendees will return home well-equipped to open up discussions about trauma care in their systems beyond, “This is what I was taught in class.” and “I read this study once”.

Traumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is one of the most operationally complex, resource-intensive calls we run, and historically, one of the least survivable. But new research and national consensus work are changing what's possible when EMS owns the first critical moments.

This session isn't a lecture. It's a conversation. Drawing from direct involvement in a national multidisciplinary TOHCA workgroup, convened by leaders across EMS, trauma surgery, and resuscitation science, this program translates recent evidence into field-ready answers. We'll tackle the questions that matter on scene: When does airway management help versus delay definitive care? What's the logic behind bilateral chest decompression when you're not sure? How do you balance simple, repeatable algorithms with the critical thinking these cases demand? And when is it time to stop?

Expect live Q&A, case discussion, and candid debate on what individual clinicians and whole trauma systems can do differently. Whether you're an educator building training or a paramedic trying to make better decisions in the moment, this session is designed to give you clarity and practical next steps, not theory you can't operationalize.

Bring your questions on perfusion strategy, resuscitation stopping points, and scene-to-center decision-making. This is real-world evidence translation for people who need answers they can apply next shift.

There are three factors that work together to kill trauma patients and they aren’t the ABCs. First responders, EMTs and paramedics can improve patient outcomes by interrupting the subtle but vicious cycle of hypothermia, acidosis and coagulopathy. This cycle, known as the Trauma Triad of Death, must be stopped before it becomes so obvious and so severe that it results in death. This session examines each leg of the lethal triad, identifying how they can be addressed individually as well as how the cycle as a whole can be interrupted before this self-feeding cycle pushes your patient past the point of no return.