Trauma, Surgical, and Burn Intensive Care

The mission of the Trauma, Surgical, and Burn Intensive Care Unit, a component of the New Mexico Regional Trauma Center residing in the only Level One Trauma Center in the State of New Mexico, is to provide the best trauma care to the injured adult patient. This unit has a collaborative practice model that includes a unit director, a medical director, an educator and an office supervisor whose offices reside within the unit. They work together to ensure that the unit functions efficiently with superb quality in the care of critically ill Trauma, Surgical and Burn patients. An essential quality in the unit's function is to provide a teaching environment for nurses, residents, medical students and ancillary personnel in the care of the injured patient.

The 24 bed unit includes a 6 bed burn center. Nurse staffing ratios are dependent on the acuity and needs of the patient. Physician coverage includes 24 hour in-house unit resident. This unit has assigned ancillary personnel including PT, Social Work, Case Managers, Respiratory Therapy, and Pharmacists. Over 2500 trauma patients are treated annually of which 77% are blunt, 20% penetrating and 3% burn. We are in the process of growing our burn unit and expect exponential growth over the next year. Innovative practices are incorporated into the care including open lung ventilation, portable head CT, and PICO catheter placement are a few of the state of the art processes utilized in the unit.