Trauma Team Activation in the Emergency Department: A Literature Review of Criteria, Processes and Outcomes

Multiple traumas require a fast and comprehensive treatment to overcome challenges that emerge from the patient’s condition. The right time for trauma team activation is necessary to treat these multiple trauma patients to improve patient outcomes. This integrative review identifies the criteria used to activate the trauma team, the activation process and the outcome of the activation. The search was conducted from January to March 2023 with two databases, namely MEDLINE and PubMed, and grey literature via Google Scholar. The search was limited to articles written in English, with abstracts and available in full text. There was no year limitation. The review found four criteria that were used for trauma team activation: physiological, anatomical, mechanism of injury and others. The process of trauma team activation begins in the pre-hospital setting. Outcomes used to evaluate the impact of trauma team activation included the level of satisfaction of patients and families, the level of complaints, response time, discharge status, and mortality. The findings of this review recommend that the criteria, process, and outcomes of trauma team activation are tailored, based on the needs and available resources of the institutions. Moreover, standardized trauma team activation may be necessary for future development.