© 2005 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd, British Association for Accident & Emergency Medicine, & Faculty of Accident & Emergency Medicine
EDITORIAL
Advanced trauma life support
ATLS: past, present, and future
Joint Editors
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Pete Driscoll
Accident and Emergency Department, Hope Hospital, Eccles Old Road, Salford M6 8HD, UK; peter.driscoll@srht.nhs.uk
ATLS is at a crossroads in its development
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The family tragedy in 1976 gave birth to the trauma legend known as ATLS. In that year a plane piloted by the orthopaedic surgeon J Styner crashed in Nebraska. His wife was killed and four children seriously injured. Unfortunately for Dr Styner he found that the subsequent care received in the local hospital was inferior to what he was able to provide for 10 hours at the scene of the accident. In the ensuing inquiry the need to train clinicians in trauma care became evident.1
Using the educational structure of the recently developed ACLS programme, the first ATLS course was run in Nebraska in 1978. The following year it was taken up by the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma (ACS COT) and rapidly spread throughout the North, Central, and South America. Today ATLS is taught in over 42 countries and around half a million
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
-
Kilroy, D. A
(2007). Teaching the trauma teachers: an international review of the Advanced Trauma Life Support Instructor Course. Emerg. Med. J.
24: 467-470
[Abstract] [Full Text] -
Luke, C
(2006). ATLS: there are alternatives.. Emerg. Med. J.
23: 160-160
[Full Text]
eLetters:
Read all eLetters
- ATLS: there are alternatives.
- Chris Luke
- EMJ Online, 8 Feb 2005 [Full text]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Read responses to this article
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
- Citation Map
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
