May is Trauma Awareness Month, that time of the year when the American Trauma Society and the Society of Trauma Nurses team up to try to keep you out of the emergency room with acute injuries. This year’s theme: “Distracted to Death,” a.k.a. keep your goddamn phone in your pocket when you’re behind the wheel.

What better time for the Outpost’s John Kennedy O’Connor to check in with the people at the region’s only level-three trauma care center, which is housed within St. Joe’s? Here we meet with the center’s program manager, Brandon Klith, and improvement nurse Pam Collver to talk about their work, and to reiterate the message: Be present and aware when driving. Hopefully this is the last you’ll see of Brandon and Pam for a while. (Unless you are friends or family, of course.)

Video above, rough transcript below.

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JOHN KENNEDY O’CONNOR:

Well, welcome to another Humboldt Conversation. I’m delighted to say actually today we’re back at Providence St Joseph Hospital and we’re meeting with two people from the Trauma Center. I’m going to introduce myself, it’s Brandon and Pam. Brandon, what is your role?

BRANDON KLITH:

So my name is Brandon. I’m the trauma program manager here at St. Joseph’s. I’ve been in this role since December of last year, so not very long.

O’CONNOR:

And Pam.

PAM COLLVER:

I’m Pamela Collver and I’m the trauma performance improvement nurse and I’ve been in this role just a little over a year.

O’CONNOR:

Now, this is actually Trauma Awareness Month, and we’re here to talk about the trauma-informed care that’s being provided to people who are in a very, very difficult situation at the hospital, because we had an incident downtown in Eureka, where everybody arrived here. How do you deal with situations like that when you’re suddenly faced with these situations?

KLITH:

That’s the great thing about being a trauma center is that we’re ready for situations like that. We train for situations like that. Our staff is ready at hand to deal with situations like that. That’s the benefit of having a trauma center. So from that incident, we got a total of nine patients that were brought to our emergency room in a very short amount of time. Six of those were critical enough to meet our trauma activation criteria. So six very critical patients. And we were able to manage all those patients simultaneously at once and care for them throughout the care of their stay through the ER. So it was very great.

O’CONNOR:

And what’s very important also to really reiterate is that this is the only trauma centre for many, many miles. This is really the epicenter where people will come.

KLITH:

So this is the largest trauma center in our county. There is a level four trauma center, which is Mad River Community Hospital. And there’s a level four center in Sutter Coast, Sutter Coast Hospital. But we’re a level three trauma center, so our capabilities are a little higher. So we have 24-7 emergency room services on hand, of course, all the time. We have 24-7 trauma surgery available. We have 24-7 orthopedic surgery available. And then we have about two to three weeks out of each month, we have neurosurgery capability available, which is phenomenal. Here this summer, we’ll be bringing on another neurosurgeon so that will increase our neurosurgery coverage. But if you look at California at large, the next largest trauma center is a ways away. North is gonna be, oh, why can’t I remember the name? Medford. Medford. East is gonna be Reading, and South is gonna be Santa Rosa. So we encompass a large amount of area that we bring patients into. So us being a level three trauma center cares for a lot of patients throughout Humboldt County. of pre-emergency.

O’CONNOR:

You referenced, obviously, the recent incident that happened in Eureka but presumably also you are bringing in people from way outside the Eureka area to deal with them in traumatic situations.

COLLVER:

Yes, so I work with EMS closely and there is a algorithm they follow when to bypass to a trauma center. So we do catch people out Highway 36, really far south. And it is to come here because we have a lot of services and we are able to keep people locally more now having a level three trauma center.

O’CONNOR:

Now, just so, for my own interest, I’m kind of curious, what is the difference between a level three and a level four? What difference will people expect through that difference? Maybe nothing.

KLITH:

It’s actually quite a bit. So it’s all about capability. So like I said, we have those services, orthopedic, trauma, neurosurgery. It’s not required for a level four trauma center to have those standards. So you could go to a level four and they may not have an orthopedic surgeon on. They may not have neurosurgery on. So level four is really meant to transfer to a higher level of care. So as you grow in level of trauma center, you’re going to have a greater amount of services.

O’CONNOR:

Now, another very, may-sound-like-a-very-silly question, but I was just curious. How do you how do you work within the ER department, and what is the difference between somebody coming into ER and coming and may need the trauma center?

KLITH:

I can answer that, I guess. So we are simultaneous. So we are one department, we work very close with ER, obviously, it’s all going to be how that patient presents. So as a trauma center, we have different criteria. So it’s called a trauma activation criteria. And if those patients coming in meet that criteria, then they’re deemed as a trauma patient, and we should activate these levels of, you know, mechanism and criteria are all shown to be, you know, related to high injury mechanisms, high injury accidents. And so what our goal is, is to get to that patient as quickly as we can scan them to make sure that we’re not missing any injuries, and you know, treat any critical injuries the soonest that we can. So we’re very, very close with the ER, we’re in the same department.

COLLVER:

I’ll add to that, we do follow the American College of Surgeons, their criteria, they give us what mechanisms we should be looking at and then we have a team response. So we have a tiered system versus alert versus a trauma code and depending on what we call overhead it’s a team response that shows up and it’s dedicated to this patient until they are stable.

O’CONNOR:

And what is happening in National Trauma Awareness Month, as you say, different from your normal routine. What is the purpose and what is the goal of the awareness campaign?

KLITH:

So the awareness campaign changes every year. The Society of Trauma Nurses, or STN, puts on a trauma awareness month every month, which is May. They pick a different topic. This year’s topic is driver safety. So phone safety, not driving under the influence. They’re really hammering hard motor vehicle accidents, which last year, so 2022, we saw roughly 385 trauma patients that we activated on. About 30 to 35% of those patients were motor vehicle accidents. So it is a high incidence in our trauma center that we’re seeing motor vehicle accidents. So this campaign is meant to really make drivers aware of driver safety.

COLLVER:

Seatbelts.

O’CONNOR:

Safety. So really the point is actually to, which makes perfect sense, is to avoid people coming into your care. It’s really taking steps to protect yourself.

KLITH:

Yeah, and that’s the whole goal of really Pam’s job and well both of us really but a big part of being a trauma center is again trying to prevent traumas, right? We want a healthy community. We don’t want patients to come to see us as a trauma patient because we want a healthy community. So we really work with the community to try to have injury prevention. One thing that we’ve been doing here recently is a stop the bleed class. So it teaches the layperson how to hold pressure over a wound, how to apply a tourniquet. In gearing up for any kind of mass shooting or incident like that.

O’CONNOR:

Well, I’m sure that all of us hope that nobody is ever going to be in your care at all. I mean, that would be the ultimate goal, but of course it’s going to happen. I think people feel very reassured to know there is such a strong team here at the hospital. Unfortunately, if they are in need of help, they will get the help that they need. Thank you very much, Brandon and Pam, for joining us today for a Humboldt Conversation. It’s really interesting to learn about your work. And as I say, let’s hope that nobody is ever in need of your help.

KLITH:

Yeah, and happy Trauma Awareness Month.

O’CONNOR:

Thank you both very much. And join us again soon for another Humboldt Conversation.