Postgraduate Course: Trauma, Toxicology and Temperature (CRCA11004)
Course Outline
| School | Deanery of Clinical Sciences |
College | College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
| Course type | Online Distance Learning |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | Environmental injury and toxins impose a huge burden of critical illness around the world with global variation in their epidemiology. Disordered temperature can be a primary or secondary consideration in these patients. Toxicology, burns, and trauma share a common requirement for tertiary care, specialist input, multidisciplinary management, and access to specialist knowledge, guidance and databases such as TOXBASE or COBIS (Care of Burns in Scotland). This course uniquely combines these overlapping clinical topics through blended participation from specialists in the field. |
| Course description |
1) Academic Description
This key clinical course amalgamates three distinct but related areas of critical care practice. It will equip students with the knowledge and skills required to safely and effectively manage the day to day care of patients admitted to critical care due to Trauma and Burns; Poisoning; Hypothermia; Hyperthermia. Upon course completion, students should feel confident that they could manage such a patient, could perform a detailed assessment of that patient, and could identify and manage any potential or real threats to patient safety. They will understand how to optimize the critical care environment to avoid heat loss, and how to facilitate body temperature reduction where indicated.
2) Outline Content
Physical injury causes the disease state known as trauma, which is the leading cause of death in young people worldwide. This course will focus on trauma causing a cascade of changes within the body that can lead to critical illness, including acidosis, coagulopathy and hypothermia. Critical Care can help to reduce the harm caused by trauma by application of early tertiary assessment and aggressive intervention aimed at halting this cascade and giving the best possible chance of returning patients to their normal level of function. This course will enable the student to assess and manage the critically ill trauma patient in the resuscitation and stabilisation phases using the Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) approach, and to carry this into their critical care practice.
Burn injury is a specific, globally important cause of trauma, which is often associated with other environmental injuries including smoke inhalation, carbon monoxide poisoning, toxin inhalation, electrocution. This course will enable the student to apply immediate first aid management and resuscitation of burns and to assess and treat the seriously burned patient requiring critical care.
Poisoning is a common occurrence around the world. We know, for instance, that every day in the United Kingdom, many hundreds of people seek advice from a health professional following exposure to a drug or chemical. Exposure may happen by accident, through errors in the dosing of medicines, or from environmental or occupational exposures. It may also occur because of drug overdose taken in the context of self-harm or drug misuse. Poisoning is the third commonest presentation to critical care in Scotland. The numbers of substances involved are very large. Toxicology can impact the individual patient both from self-poisoning and from extraneous, environmental sources. This course will enable the student to manage any critically ill poisoned patient using a toxidrome-based approach, and to apply cognitive support such as TOXBASE.
Maintenance of normal body temperature is complex, and temperature dysregulation impacts on many injured or poisoned critically ill patients. This course will explore the physiology of temperature regulation, hypothermia and hyperthermia, and temperature management in critical illness. The practical aspects of this will be demonstrated in a walk round of the virtual critical care unit.
3) Student Learning Experience
Students will learn from clinical experts in critical care, toxicology, trauma and burns. The course activities will be based within the virtual intensive care unit where patients with trauma, poisoning and temperature dysregulation are located. The students will work in teams during the discussion boards to create infographics on trauma, toxicology or temperature management in the critical care unit, evidencing their learning through this. Classic papers will be reviewed. They will revise the practicalities of creation of an infographic There will be weekly online safety in practice-based quizzes. The students will also engage with recorded tutorials and lectures featuring the Advanced Trauma Life Support approach; tertiary survey; key practical procedures and safety drills. They will also produce a reflective case report on one personally selected ethical or psycho-social aspect of the course.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2021/22, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Block 4 (Sem 2) |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
98 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
In course assessment: 100 % |
| Feedback |
Feedback is defined as information to students which allows them to review what they know, understand and can do in their studies. Feedback is also important to identify areas for improvement, for example course feedback surveys will be an integral component of the programme to allow refinement.
Opportunities for feedback arise during timetabled courses, for example during live session tutorials, interactive discussion boards, emails. Feedback can be provided on coursework assignments but also activities which are not formally assessed, for example class discussion on the discussion board, group exercises, problem-solving such as weekly quizzes and developing project plans and proposals. A formative task is provided in each course which provides feedforward prior to the student submitting their first piece of summative assessed course work.
All assignments will be marked, and feedback will be provided within a period of fifteen working days (where possible) following the submission date (excluding holidays periods whereby the University of closed, e.g. over the Christmas period). |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate a critical understanding of common environmental and toxicological emergencies
- Demonstrate the ability to apply knowledge and skills to the management of environmental and toxicological emergencies regardless of healthcare setting
- Make informed treatment decisions in patients with environmental and toxicological emergencies in the absence of complete or consistent information
- Recognise the multidisciplinary nature of trauma and burns management and demonstrate the ability to collaborate within a multidisciplinary team
- Exercise autonomy and accountability in the clinical approach to the management of environmental and toxicological emergencies
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
a) Mindsets:
Enquiry and lifelong learning:
Graduates of this course will be encouraged to pursue their own curiosity and to learn and develop in the field of critical care, to strive for excellence in their own professional practice, and to strive to improve care for patients as part of a multidisciplinary team.
Aspiration and personal development
Students will be encouraged to draw on their own experiences to identify areas in which they wish to grow and develop acknowledging that different students will have different priorities and aspirations.
Outlook and engagement
Students will be asked to bring to the course experiences from their own practice, often specifically relating to their own geographical and cultural context, that can be used to explore learning, engage with individuals from other international communities on the programme.
b) Skills:
Research and enquiry
Students will use and further develop newly acquired expertise in accessing the literature and critical appraisal, to incorporate the findings of primary research in their arguments, discussions, and assessments.
Personal and intellectual autonomy
Students will be encouraged to use their own personal and intellectual autonomy through their active participation in self-directed learning, discussion boards and collaborative activities to critically evaluate ideas evidence and experiences from an open-minded perspective.
Personal effectiveness
Success on the course will require students to be effective an proactive learners. Using the resources of the course tutors, and the university learning and information environment, students will be encouraged and supported to contribute to their own learning, as well as that of others.
Communication
Excellence in critical care is dependent on excellent communication, and the structure of the interactive (discussion boards and collaborative activities) and assessment elements incorporate constant reinforcement and development of this skill. |
| Keywords | trauma,triage,burns,poisoning,toxicology,hypothermia,hyperthermia,fever,critical care |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Miss Lindsay Rutherford
Tel: (0131) 242 9409
Email: Lindsay.Rutherford@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mrs Olga Paterson
Tel: (0131) 242 6130
Email: Olga.Paterson@ed.ac.uk |
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