Survey on knowledge of acute trauma care among trainee anesthesiologists

Background: Trauma is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in India. A trauma-related death occurs every 1.9 min, and the mortality in serious injuries is six times worse compared to a developed country. Methods: The postgraduates were given a questionnaire with three sections. The first and second sections had questions pertaining to the participants' demographic data, their training, and their perceptions on training in trauma care. The third section contained ten multiple-choice questions designed to check their factual knowledge on basic trauma care. Their scores were rated as follows: poor (0-6), satisfactory (7-8), and excellent (9-10). Results: All 146 participants were postgraduates. Fifty-five (37.7%) of them claimed to have undergone a formal training in the initial trauma management. The scores obtained by both trained and untrained respondents were very low. Only 30.9% of the trained postgraduates managed a score of >= 7. 87%, whereas the untrained ones had a score of <7. While nearly 19% of the specifically trained postgraduates scored 9-10, only 2.63% of the untrained ones did so. Two trained students and no untrained student got a score of 10. Conclusion: The knowledge of trauma care among postgraduates is grossly inadequate to provide trauma care in acute trauma scenarios. Since training has shown to have better outcomes, such programs need to be incorporated in the postgraduate curriculum.