Traumatic injury remains one of the world’s most formidable public health challenges, primarily because it typically occurs far from trauma centers. With this gap in care in mind, the ACS developed the Trauma Evaluation and Management (TEAM)™ course in 2016 to equip novice trauma providers and healthcare professional students with a structured, hands-on introduction to the initial evaluation and early management of trauma-related injuries.
The recent launch of the TEAM 4th Edition helped advance this training with uncommon speed—from planning tables to packed skills labs—through coordinated launches in the US, India, Pakistan, Italy, Brazil, Colombia, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. Additional training is scheduled this year.
Notably, new adopters of the TEAM course often tout how accessible—and transformative—the content is in describing the fundamental principles of early stage trauma care, particularly during the “golden hour” (the hour after injury). Unfortunately, most novice providers and students encounter trauma care training in fragments—an anatomy lecture here, a shift shadowing the care team in the emergency room there—without a coherent framework to tie it all together.
The TEAM course features a structured, team-based approach that anchors learners in an algorithmic injury assessment (with early hemorrhage control at the forefront), reinforces safe, efficient handoffs and closed-loop communication, and immerses participants in realistic scenarios that reward calm, ordered thinking over improvisation. As a result, the TEAM course not only provides trauma care knowledge, it also helps bolster the confidence and readiness of medical students, interns, nurses, and other healthcare personnel.
Bridging Theory and Action
Among a vast array of countries and care settings, basic trauma care is delivered unevenly. In many hospitals, especially in low-resource environments, the golden hour is often managed by novice clinicians and healthcare students who have not been instructed on the basics of trauma care in a formal setting. Patients might assume a fully trained member of the trauma team is caring for them, while the reality is some providers are unsure of next steps following the initial assessment.
The TEAM course is based on the same principles that underpin the ACS’s flagship trauma course—Advanced Trauma Life Support® (ATLS®).
The ATLS course originated from a tragic 1976 plane crash in which the family of orthopaedic surgeon Jim Styner, MD, FACS, was severely injured, revealing inadequate trauma care in rural hospitals. Working with colleagues, Dr. Styner helped develop a standardized approach to trauma care that was introduced in 1978 and formalized as the ATLS program in 1980. Its enduring principles—prioritize life threats (“treat first what kills first”), use the xABCDE primary survey based on guidance from ATLS 11 (the latest edition), avoid doing harm while restoring physiology (“damage control” thinking), and communicate in a closed loop, with a common, reproducible language for the golden hour—now span continents.
Whereas ATLS is an extensive, comprehensive curriculum designed for healthcare professionals directly involved in trauma resuscitation (physicians, surgeons, emergency and critical care clinicians, and advanced practice providers), TEAM provides an adaptable, less rigid structure that can be tailored to the needs of the learners with a shared, hands-on framework for rapid evaluation and early management.
From Vision to Execution
Launching a global educational program requires more than strong content. To be successful, the program necessitates collaboration and attention to logistics, quality, and sustainability. The implementation playbook emphasizes:
Local champions. When TEAM launched, faculty leads in India, Italy, Brazil, and Pakistan adapted cases, recruited instructors, and secured venues—often across multiple institutions in a city or region. A local champion is essential for successful implementation of the course because they provide sustained, credible leadership. These leaders possess contextual knowledge to adapt TEAM to local needs and are able to navigate institutional barriers and maintain momentum after initial training ends.
Champions serve as trusted peers who can effectively recruit participants, integrate training into daily practice, and ensure skills translate to improved patient care. Their ongoing presence enables continuous quality improvement, troubleshooting, and reinforcement that transforms a one-time course into lasting change. Without a local champion, even excellent training programs typically fail to achieve sustainable impact.
Contextualization without compromise. Contextualizing trauma training to the local environment is critical for relevance and adoption, as providers are more likely to retain and apply skills when scenarios reflect the injury patterns, resources, and clinical settings they encounter. Adapting case examples to include common local mechanisms of injury (such as motorcycle crashes, agricultural injuries, or violence injury patterns specific to the region), available equipment, and realistic resource constraints makes the training practical rather than aspirational.
