Incorporating red blanket protocol within code crimson: Streamlining definitive trauma care amid the chaos.

Abstract

The care of a patient involved in major trauma with exsanguinating haemorrhage is time-critical to achieve definitive haemorrhage control, and it requires co-ordinated multidisciplinary care. During initial resuscitation of a patient in the emergency department (ED), Code Crimson activation facilitates rapid decision-making by multi-disciplinary specialists for definitive haemorrhage control in operating theatre (OT) and/or interventional radiology (IR) suite. Once this decision has been made, there may still be various factors that lead to delay in transporting the patient from ED to OT/IR. Red Blanket protocol identifies and addresses these factors and processes which cause delay, and aims to facilitate rapid and safe transport of the haemodynamically unstable patient from ED to OT, while minimizing delay in resuscitation during the transfer. The two processes, Code Crimson and Red Blanket, complement each other. It would be ideal to merge the two processes into a single protocol rather than having two separate workflows. Introducing these quality improvement strategies and coordinated processes within the trauma framework of the hospitals/healthcare systems will help in further improving the multi-disciplinary care for the complex trauma patients requiring rapid and definitive haemorrhage control.