Publish date: 23 June 2021
Lauren Nellins is the trauma nurse coordinator at the emergency hospital in Cramlington. In our latest blog she talks about the role and why it’s so important.
Both my parents worked in healthcare and I always wanted to be a nurse like my dad. I’ve now worked for the trust for almost 12 years so it’s fantastic to be doing a brand new role like this.
I’ve previously been based in the emergency department which has always been my passion and for the last nine years I have also had the additional responsibility of being the Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN) coordinator.
This is a really specific job that helps understand the experience and journey of our trauma patients not just in A&E but as they move through other wards on the hospital and back out into the community.
It’s about our ability to continuously review patients once they are admitted to a ward or the critical care unit, so the correct medical pathways are always in place and altered as their needs change.
I also ensure that all the appropriate referrals are made for things like tests, investigations or future care from people like the community head injury services.
Through this role I can also support our nursing and rehabilitation teams caring for the trauma patients and act as resource for them to develop their trauma care skills as well. There’s a lot around education.
There are as many as 140 major trauma patients each month and even during lockdown we have had lots of people come into A&E for things like falls. One of the key issues, especially for older people, is what we call stealth trauma where someone may have a simple fall or accident and not realise how serious the damage is.
There’s no typical day, but each morning I’m part of the head injury ward rounds with our senior emergency department doctors and I’m also visiting patients on most of the wards across the hospital in Cramlington.
I’ve done lots of extra training around trauma including the instructor’s course for the Level 2 Trauma Nursing Core Competencies (TNCC) that gave me the opportunity to teach staff in neighbouring regions.
These opportunities have given me good connections at the Northern Trauma Network which will give me the chance to promote these courses to our teams to make sure we all develop our trauma care skills together.