Injury Prevention
Injury prevention education is offered as a community service through our trauma injury prevention program. Our emphasis is on preventable injury awareness and promoting the health of people living in our region.
Education Offered
Education is provided on many topics for any age group and can be tailored to meet the specific needs of your school, community group, or organization. Our educational topics include:
- Motor vehicle safety for all ages, including teens, their parents, and the elderly
- Motorcycle safety
- Concussion in youth sports
- Brain injury prevention
- Bike/skateboard safety
- Fall prevention
- Seasonal injuries such as those related to swimming, personal water craft, and sports
- Customized traumatic injury prevention lectures available to suit your school’s or organization’s needs
Community Education Presentations
Below is a list of some of the presentations we offer. For more information, or to arrange a presentation, please contact our regional trauma outreach coordinator at TraumaOutreach@carilionclinic.org.
| Presentation Name | Target Population |
Description
|
|---|---|---|
| Fall Prevention | Older adults and family members |
How to prevent falls, covers risk factor in the home, health conditions, and medications that increase risks of falls. Find tips to prevent falls. CDC link: https://www.cdc.gov/steadi/patient.htm Use this fall prevention checklist for older adults: https://www.cdc.gov/steadi/pdf/STEADI-Brochure-StayIndependent-508.pdf |
| A Matter of Balance: Managing Concerns about Falls | Older adults |
An 8-week structured group intervention that emphasizes practical strategies to reduce fear of falling and increase activity levels. Participants learn to view falls and fear of falling as controllable, set realistic goals to increase activity, change their environment to reduce fall risk factors, and exercise to increase strength and balance. Matter of Balance https://www.ncoa.org/healthy-aging/falls-prevention/ |
| Senior Driving Safety | Older adults |
How age affects the human body and in turn can effect driving as we age. |
| “Why did the Human Cross the Road?” | Adults |
Breaks down the events that occur in a Car vs Pedestrian crash. Covers most common injuries suffered and contributing factors. |
| “Get Your Head Examined” | Active adults or teens |
Types of head injury with focus on the most common type: concussions. Brain injury Basics - HEADS UP: https://www.cdc.gov/headsup/basics/index.html PREVENTION: https://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/prevention.html http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/traumatic-brain-injury/resources/ |
| Distracted Driving | Teens/adults |
Details the growing problem of Distracted Driving. Includes statistics, definitions, and prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/index.html See vehicle safety statistics and guidelines: https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/ |
| Anatomy of a Car Crash | Teens |
Describes the relationship between physics and a car crash. Covers the 3 types of crashes that occur... i.e. Car, body, and internal organs. Local, State, National statistics for motor vehicle crashes. |
| Drugs: A Trauma Nurse Perspective | Teens/Adults |
Discusses local and national drug trends, drug categories, connection to traumatic injuries, and how it affects your body. |
| River Rescue and Safety | Teens/Adults |
Promote proactive prevention of river accidents and injuries. Develop and practice key self-rescue skills. Identify and avoid river hazards by understanding hydrology, hazards, and river features. Focus on fast, low-risk strategies for early management of river accidents. Practice methods for recovering swimmers and loose boats/equipment. |
| Stop the Bleed™ | General public |
Promote proactive prevention of river accidents and injuries. Develop and practice key self-rescue skills. Identify and avoid river hazards by understanding hydrology, hazards, and river features. Focus on fast, low-risk strategies for early management of river accidents. Practice methods for recovering swimmers and loose boats/equipment. STOP the Bleed (PDF) https://www.bleedingcontrol.org/-/media/bleedingcontrol/files/stop-the-bleed-booklet.ashx |
Possible Poisoning: What to Do
- Poison control centers offer free, confidential, expert medical advice 24/7 through the Poison Help Line:
1-800-222-1222, and a new online, interactive tool, PoisonHelp.org.
- Prevention https://aapcc.org/Prevention
Winter Storm Safety
- Make a plan https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/winter/beforestorm/preparehome.html
- Stay Safe During and After a Storm https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/winter/duringstorm/indoorsafety.html
Level I Trauma Statistics
Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital (CRMH) serves as the only Level 1 Trauma Center in Southwest Virginia providing state of the art care to adult and pediatric patients alike.
Over the past four years (2020-2023), the volume of trauma cases seen at CRMH has remained fairly stable. Even during the period of the COVID-19 Pandemic, where many centers experienced a decrease in cases, our trauma patient volumes remained at approximately pre-pandemic numbers.
Mechanism of Injury (MOI)
The way an individual gets hurt is referred to as the mechanism of injury (MOI)
Traumatic Injuries are typically divided into three major categories of mechanism.
- Trauma by blunt mechanisms (e.g. motor vehicle crashes, falls, bike accidents)
- Trauma by penetrating mechanisms (e.g. firearms, knives)
- Trauma due to burn injuries.
During 2023, our Trauma Center at CRMH received 3157 cases. Of these injuries, approximately 85% were from a blunt mechanism. This included:
- Falls: 1395
- Motor Vehicle & Motorcycle Crashes (MVC & MCC): 783
- Bicycle: 71
- Assault: 147
- Gunshot Wounds (GSW): 126
- Burn Injury: 41
- Other Blunt Trauma: 431
- Other penetrating Trauma: 134
- Unknown/unspecified: 29
It is of note that we have seen a 37% increase in assault and violence related crime with a 3% increase of gun related penetrating trauma (e.g. gunshot wounds) as well as a 30% increase in ATV related injuries and mortalities.
Trauma Outreach and Injury Prevention
Older adults account for a large portion of the trauma patients seen at CRMH. This is because, thanks to medical advancements, people are living longer than ever before. Knowing this information has led to continued improvements in our injury prevention tactics to this group as well as providing more specialized care to these patients for better outcomes. Additionally, we have noted an 8% increase in our MVC related injuries, so we have developed education targeted at specific age groups to help prevent future injuries and decrease severity of injuries that do occur.
Examining the types of patients and injuries we see helps to drive our injury prevention and community education efforts. This way we can live our mission every day of improving the health of the communities we serve.
The graphical representation shows the range of trauma cases at Carilion Clinic.
