Preparing for trauma season, honoring trauma survivors

National Trauma Survivors Day - coming up on May 20 - is a day to honor the strength and resilience of trauma survivors, their loved ones and their care teams. It's a day to raise awareness, to celebrate recovery and to recognize that healing involves both mind and body.

And at St. Charles, it's a day for trauma survivors to reunite with the people who supported them through their most challenging times.

For the past two years, our Trauma Program has hosted a local Trauma Survivors Day event at the Bend hospital, bringing together former trauma patients, St. Charles caregivers and first responders and giving them an opportunity to connect, to catch up and to continue the healing journey.

It's a special event, one full of reminiscence and emotion. Trauma care is fast-paced and intense, and patients don't always get a chance to see or speak with the caregivers and providers who supported them during some of their most critical moments. This day creates space for those meaningful reunions - allowing patients and care teams to reflect, share gratitude and see the impact of healing beyond the hospital walls.

You can learn more about our Trauma Survivors Day event here.

Almost exactly a month later, summer officially begins. In the world of trauma care, summer is known as "trauma season" because of the increase in injuries related to falls and crashes - of motor vehicles, ATVs, bicycles, motorcycles and so on.

In an area like Central Oregon, where outdoor recreation is prevalent, you can imagine how busy summers are in our Emergency Departments.

One of my favorite St. Charles statistics, in fact, is that since we established our Trauma Program about a decade ago, the number of patients we've seen has more than doubled to nearly 1,700 annually, but not because of an increase in the number of accidents that cause traumatic injuries. We're seeing many more patients because as we've added more highly skilled surgeons and advanced practice providers - and as we've continued to build and advance a regional system of trauma-related services - more and more traumas that used to go longer distances to hospitals in Portland and elsewhere are now coming to us. This is an essential service for a vast swath of the Pacific Northwest - our program covers a huge area that stretches from the Columbia River gorge, east to Idaho and down into parts of Northern California.

So more people with traumatic injuries are getting the care they need faster and often closer to home. That's the good news. The bad news is that St. Charles' Emergency Departments have not physically grown to keep up. Our ED in Bend, for example, is the same size it was 10 years ago, and 10 years before that. It's not large enough to serve our growing Trauma Program, particularly when you consider the growth of the community.

We're actively working to fix that. In February, St. Charles Foundation's annual Saints Gala raised more than $675,000 that will be used to strengthen critical care at St. Charles and expand the Bend ED. We're working on plans for a permanent expansion; in the meantime, if you drive by the Bend hospital in the coming months, you may notice a temporary building on the east side of the facility, adjacent to the existing ED. That building will provide much-needed additional space for the department, just as our new Susan A. Ellings Inpatient Rehab unit - currently under construction - is doing for caregivers and patients a bit further along in their recovery journey.

We wish we didn't need that space, of course. We wish our Emergency Departments were always empty - that no one would suffer a serious injury requiring emergency care. But that's not realistic. Accidents will continue to happen, people will continue to get hurt, and it's our job to be there to help them and begin the healing process.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Sincerely,
Steve