UHealth Trauma Surgeons Teach First Advanced Trauma Life Support Course in St. Lucia

Expanding surgical expertise and elevating trauma care to improve the triage, care and outcomes for residents and visitors to the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia were the goals of a recent project by UHealth providers.

Gerd Daniel Pust, M.D., teaching ATLS class in St. Lucia.

“I met with local physicians and we looked into opportunities to teach the Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) course in St. Lucia for the first time as part of a trauma outreach program supported by Ryder Trauma Center and the University of Miami,” said Gerd Daniel Pust, M.D., FACS, assistant professor of surgery at the Miller School of Medicine.

Developing a trauma system and promoting educational initiatives and local collaboration are central to advancing the medical care of critically injured patients, said Pust, who is also director of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital. “St. Lucia is well developed as a tourist destination but has limited health care resources.”

In addition to limited equipment and other resources, transfer of the severely injured to a major trauma center is often not an option for residents of St. Lucia.

A team of trauma surgeons from UHealth/Jackson Ryder Trauma Center traveled to St. Lucia in February to train 20 local physicians at Victoria Hospital. In addition to Pust, the team included Drs. Lee Wong, Rishi Rattan, and George Daniel Garcia, emergency room physician Dedrick Luikens from St. Croix, UHealth Tower emergency nurse manager Eldorana Pust, and ATLS coordinators Lisette DiFilippi and Doreann Dearmas.

The ATLS is a framework of best practices developed by the American College of Surgeons and designed to standardize acute trauma patient care in more than 50 countries around the world. Although the course content remains essentially the same, the training can be adapted to reflect local conditions.

“I thought ATLS would be helpful for the local physicians and patients, and it’s something we can do to start a collaboration between our centers,” Pust said. “Our experience in teaching the ATLS course allows us to assist physicians in St. Lucia to become instructors themselves, and establish their own independent ATLS training site under the leadership of Victoria Hospital Emergency Room Director Dr. Lisa Charles.”

The program is also taught at the University of Miami every month under the leadership of ATLS Course Director George Garcia.

Trauma care takes a team approach, and the next initiative will be to teach nurses in addition to physicians when Pust and team return to St. Lucia. “We are also currently working on establishing a trauma registry and an integrated trauma system in collaboration with the Ministry of Health of St. Lucia,” Pust said.

Tags: Advanced Trauma Life Support, Gerd Daniel Pust, St. Lucia, UHealth/Jackson Ryder Trauma Center