Guidance
This guideline covers the rapid identification and early management of major trauma in pre‑hospital and hospital settings, including ambulance services, emergency departments, major trauma centres and trauma units. It aims to reduce deaths and disabilities in people with serious injuries by improving the quality of their immediate care. It does not cover care for people with burns.
The guideline should be read alongside the NICE guidelines on major trauma: service delivery, spinal injury, complex fractures and fractures.
Last reviewed: 17 February 2016
This guideline updates and replaces evidence summary ESUOM1.
Next review: This guidance will be reviewed if there is new evidence that is likely to change the recommendations.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- immediate destination after injury
- airway management
- management of chest trauma in pre-hospital and hospital settings
- management of haemorrhage
- pain management
- information and support for patients with major trauma and their families and carers
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals and practitioners who provide care for people with major trauma in pre-hospital and hospital settings
- People with major trauma, their families and carers
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.