Patients' Perceptions of Trauma Care

Good trauma care is fast and protocolized, which can seem impersonal and uncaring. To identify opportunities to improve patient satisfaction, these investigators used the qualitative techniques of semi-structured patient interviews (n=30) and video observation (n=20).

Participants were a convenience sample of alert English-speaking patients who had undergone trauma resuscitation at an urban academic level 1 trauma center. Purposive sampling was used to include men and women, a variety of injury severities, and violent and nonviolent injuries.

The investigators found that patients calibrated their expectations with their perceptions of injury severity, understanding that less communication was sometimes necessary in the face of life-threatenin…