Revolutionizing Trauma Care with the Mobile Surgical Transport Team

Welcome to season two of Flatline to Lifeline!  Join us in this episode for a conversation about the events that changed the way some emergency treatments can be approached, somewhat akin to improving the performance of a football team. We explore the concept of the Golden Hour and how medical teams can prioritize the decisions and surgical and critical care of every critically injured trauma patient. In our experience, these changes resulted in lower mortality rates and provided unexpected survival.

We also discuss a game-changing innovation: The Mobile Surgical Transport Team (MSTT). This episode and the next six episodes show how this innovation brought some of the critical components of an ACSCOT level one trauma center to remote and resource scarce regions in the Pacific NW. Our discussion takes a deep dive into complex challenges of rural trauma surgical care, with limited surgical team experience with complex traumatic injuries, a limited blood bank, and surgical equipment usually not available at many rural hospitals staffed with only an emergency physician and occasionally a general surgeon. 

The Advanced Trauma Life Support Course recommends for rural hospitals and staff to stabilize and transfer to a trauma center. Some critically injured trauma patients cannot be stabilized without more advanced resources and training. This led us to think of ways we could bring some of our level one resources to a rural hospital calling for help and help them to stabilize the patient there before transporting the patient to a trauma center. 

We had to overcome logistical and legal requirements to create this system. Examples include: malpractice Insurance covering our surgeons for care rendered at the rural hospital, medical licenses for the MSTT surgeon operating at a hospital in another state, and emergency surgical privileges to be granted and on file by the rural hospital. All this had to be done before we provided the MSTT service. We credentialed the Emanuel trauma surgeons whose personality, skills, and knowledge would be conducive to working with rural hospital personnel in a collaborative way.

We conclude this episode with a discussion about trauma care provided by surgeons board certified in their specialty, but who may not have the skills and knowledge to perform high quality trauma care with the MSTT and at our trauma center when the patient is transferred there. We focus on the importance of teamwork, especially when all the trauma team members are under severe stress from knowing the patient is in danger of dying if rapid and effective care is not provided competently.

To learn more about these life saving strategies and techniques, look for Dr. Long’s upcoming book, Flatline to Lifeline.
You can also learn more about Susan Baker's book, The Injury Fact Book, here.
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Producer: Esther McDonald
Director & Technical Support: Lindsey Kealey, Host of The PAWsitive Choices Podcast

© Flatline to Lifeline 2025