Luckily enough the medical sector in Sweden has
had a limited experience of handling severe injuries.
However, the down of this was that Sweden was not in
the front line to introduce improvements of the trauma
care. These improvements are, e.g., represented of programs
and protocols as the Advanced Trauma Life Support
(ATLS)3, Trauma Nurse Core Course (TNCC)4 and
Prehospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS)2 programs
(Figure 1). Since the middle of the 1990’s these programs
have gradually been introduced and they have given a
common structure to, and improved the quality of, the
trauma care. In this context, the PHTLS is of special interest.
The PHTLS-course is a 3-day course focused on
pre-hospital trauma care, with special emphasis on problems
related to traffic crashes. Interestingly with this training
course is the strong focus on the relation between
injury mechanisms and injuries, as this citation indicates;
“A complete, accurate history and proper interpretation
of this information can allow the EMT (Emergency Medical
Technician) to predict more than 90% of the patient’s
injuries before he ever lays a hand on the patient”