Joint Trauma Service Clinical Practice Guidelines: The Standard of Deployed Medicine

The Joint Trauma System (JTTS)Clinical Practice Guidelines(CPGs) are the standard of care for all US Military

Medcal Providers.  They are backed by evidence and represent the current expectations of care.  If you have a qustion as to where a specific recommendation came from the reference is usually included.  Where no evidence exists, We have partnered with the JTS and have started slowly pumping out quality PFC CPGs on a variety of subjects.  We take our time so that the recommendations are the most practical possible for medics in the field while being the most evidence based as possible. For instance, the TIB CPG took 18 months from inception to publication in the Journal of Special Operations Medicine where all of our CPGs are published.  If you are not a member of the Special Operations Medical Association or don’t have access to the journal apart from SOMA, you can always access the CPGs on the JTS CPG page.  Just Google it. Once on that page you can also check out the nearly 50 other CPGs for other issues.  Most of the CPGs have corresponding PPT slide shows associated with each of them that you can used to give classes with.

They are absolute gold.

Click the image below to go to the site now or read more if you’re not convinced.

many guidelines and corresponding slideshows for practitioners of all skill levels in all theaters have been put together by the brightest minds the Army could fit in one place.  I’ll refer to the CPG on burn care as it is, in my opinion, their masterpiece.

Burn Care CPG

Step by step instructions including checklists and flowsheets for anyone to follow.  And if that wasn’t easy enough, there is a 14 page slideshow that helps break down the important concepts further as well as slideshows for each individual CPG.

CPG Burn Care Slideshow Presentation

In the burn care CPG there are two distinct sections, besides the appendices, that deal with both coalition soldier care and indigenous personnel, the latter assuming that you will be the definitive care provider for your host nation casualty.  Both sections utilize the nursing care documentation and flowsheet which are provided at the end as appendix A and B respectively.  The flowsheet emphasizes that the practitioner closely monitor both fluids given and the urine output.  The nursing care checklist is burn care specific and a template to put times to procedures.  From a medic’s perspective I can see using this in conjunction with telemedicine in a prolonged field care scenario where both the caller and adviser have an identical copy of the blank sheet and fill

Some of these are a little over m mn’mmny head as a medic in either scope of practice or equipment used which doesn’t matter.  You will know what “right” looks like and have the opportunity to strive to give that level of care.  These make for great classes either while deployed or back in the rear during NTM’s or other provider led classes.  If your Doc or PA doesn’t know about these, stick em on a thumb drive and get it to them.  If you are a Doc or PA, this is what medics are hungry for, higher level classes that improve our knowledge and awareness of the best care we can give our patients.  I keep hard copies in a folder and both digital CPGs and Slideshows in my Kindle and on a hard drive.