The 2023 Trauma Quality Improvement Program (TQIP) Annual Conference took place December 1–3 in Louisville, Kentucky, and featured educational programming tethered to the meeting’s theme, Road to Recovery. Content included presentations describing clinical best practices, the value of ACS Quality Programs, and a powerful story of trauma survivorship.
“We have more than 1,800 attendees in the audience, and that just speaks to the commitment you have to the care of the injured patient,” said Avery B. Nathens, MD, PhD, MPH, FACS, FRCSC, Medical Director of ACS Trauma Quality Programs, as he opened the conference. He gave an update on TQIP initiatives, including best practices and protocols, a renewed focus on rural trauma, the patient-reported outcomes pilot, and more.
A new Executive Session—developed with hospital quality thought-leaders in mind—highlighted the value of ACS Quality Programs, including the trauma center verification program, and provided insights on the ACS’s 112-year old commitment to and advancement of surgical quality, including the new Power of Quality Campaign.
“There are more than 1,200 hospitals participating in our Quality Programs that are already displaying the ACS Surgical Quality Partner diamond plaques,” said ACS Executive Director and CEO Patricia L. Turner, MD, MBA, FACS. “By October 2024, we aim to have the diamond in 2,500 US hospitals.”
Illustrating the collaborative role and function of the entire trauma care team, this year’s Trauma Survivor Session featured Tate and his mother Nicole Reynolds, who shared the story of Tate’s remarkable recovery after leaping over the back of a couch and landing on a misplaced steak knife. Tate, 11 years old at the time, coded three times—his aorta sliced in half through a kidney, the knife lodged into his spine.
Anne Rizzo, MD, FACS, who was Tate’s attending surgeon at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, VA, moderated the session and shared her perspective as a trauma care provider.
“When Tate came in and I looked at his initial x-ray as we were rushing him to the operating room, I thought ‘Oh my god, I don't know that I can save this boy because that knife was in the center of his ability to live,” said Dr. Rizzo in a video developed by the Inova Health Foundation and presented during the session. Despite the severity of his injuries, Tate is alive today due to the optimal care he received from Dr. Rizzo and the entire trauma care team.
Other key sessions included as look at the ACS “Quality Framework in Action,” where presenters shared how their hospitals used the ACS QI Framework to enhance performance and outcomes specifically regarding unplanned intensive care unit admissions, goals of care conversations with elderly trauma patients, and decannulation rates in trauma patients, as well as the revised TQP Best Practices Guidelines in the Management of TBI [Traumatic Brain Injury].
Read more of this year’s conference highlights.
