Trauma

High-volume expertise

St. Louis Children’s Hospital is the pediatric flagship of BJC Healthcare, one of the largest nonprofit health care organizations in the U.S. and receives pediatric trauma referrals from its 14 additional hospitals with over 500,000 yearly ER visits throughout greater St. Louis, southern Illinois and mid-Missouri regions. This unique location allows for trainees to experience traumatic injuries from both rural and urban settings. 

Furthermore, SLCH is the only designated Pediatric Level 1 Trauma center that is verified by the American College of Surgeons in both Missouri and Illinois, which means we provide the highest classification of trauma care. We see approximately 2,000 injury related cases per year ranging from minor to severe, including head injury, burns and orthopaedic injuries, and have access to all pediatric specialties.  Our penetrating trauma rates are one of the highest in the country.  We have highly specialized trauma programs including neurocritical care, neurorehabilitation, sexual assault nurse examiners (SANE), trauma clinics and pediatric acute wound services (PAWS).  We are members of the Injury Free Coalition for Kids and focus on research and advocacy to address injury prevention in our region.  Pediatric emergency medicine fellows are expected to learn how to adequately address trauma airways as well as lead the trauma activations.  All of our trauma stat activations are video recorded for quality improvement purposes and reviewed at a quarterly educational conference.