Assessing Technical Skills in the Trauma Bay: Benchmarking & Creating Procedural Norms

Purpose of Review: Proficiency in life-saving interventions is necessary to minimize morbidity and mortality in critically injured patients. The technical skills required to secure a difficult airway, insert an emergent tube thoracostomy, or to resuscitate a pulseless trauma patient develop over many years. Yet the training objective (i.e. the definition of success or technical mastery) often remains poorly defined. This review describes various approaches used to create norms around these and other common trauma bay procedures and the process by which to validate these norms as benchmarks against which performance can be measured. Recent Findings: Approaches to assess technical skills in the trauma bay include direct observation and evaluation, simulation with real time assessment of procedures, and video review retrospective analysis of common trauma bay procedures. Approaches to benchmarking standards and developing procedural norms vary, but remain beneficial. Summary: The literature reports a plethora of assessment tools to evaluate technical skills in the trauma bay, with a heavy focus on trauma video review. To create standards for skill performance, procedural benchmarks should be established and evaluated repeatedly to monitor proficiency or mastery.