Thursday, February 05, 2009

Trauma Team vs. Delirium team?

My Internal Medicine attending made an interesting point today, brought up at a lecture by Dr Rivers (famous for his work on treatment of shock/sepsis in the emergency department, published in the NEJM):


  • Number of hospital staff who work on a trauma patient who just arrived at a large hospital: usually ~10-20

  • Your chance of dying from an auto accident if you make it to the hospital alive: ~10%



  • Number of hospital staff who work on a patient with delirium who just arrived at a large hospital: perhaps the medical student at first, then the doctor when s/he gets around to it

  • Your chance of dying from delirium: ~50%

A bit of a disconnect, perhaps?


2 comments:

Government Funded Blogger said...

That is a shocking stat!!

Anonymous said...

quite right!

p.s. where in Canada are you? I'm a 4th year at UBC; post-carms, soon to be a Family Practice resident.

I'm blogging at http://drottematic.wordpress.com