Resiliency After Trauma Highlighted at This Year’s ATSPA Conference

“Fostering Resiliency in the Trauma Community” is the theme of the American Trauma Society Pennsylvania Division’s annual conference at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center on Wednesday, March 14 and Thursday, March 15, 2018. Topics will include elderly orthopedic trauma, sex trafficking, organ and tissue donation, and intimate partner violence.

J. Spence Reid, professor of orthopedic surgery and division chief of orthopedic trauma at the Penn State University College of Medicine and Milton S. Hershey Medical Center will be presenting “Orthopaedic Trauma in the Elderly: The Coming Epidemic” at the conference to put a spotlight on the increase in orthopedic trauma in the elderly. He will also outline the unique aspects of this patient population: bone fragility, increased activity levels, prevalence of joint replacements, and challenging post-injury care situations. Elderly trauma survivors will be there to share their experiences.

Another highlight of the American Trauma Society Pennsylvania Division (ATSPA) conference will be a talk by James W. Davis, M.D., FAC on “Intimate Partner Violence: The Rule of Thumb”. Davis, chief of trauma at Community Regional Medical Center and professor of clinical surgery and the program director of the Acute Care Surgery Fellowship Program at the University of California San Francisco Fresno Center for Medical Education and Research, will discuss how prevalent domestic violence is in the United States (it presents in at least one in five minutes seeking help in the emergency department) and how unfortunately physicians frequently fail to recognize the signs.

Some of the other presentations planned include:

• “A Visual Potpourri of Pediatric Trauma”
• “Unmasking Sex Trafficking: The Impacts on Healthcare”
• “Saving Lives & Giving Hope Through Organ and Tissue Donation”
• “Amish Trauma Care: Plain not Fancy”
• “When A Hurricane Strikes – How Do We Evacuate Patients”
• “Planning and Responding to an Active Shooter Event in The Workplace”
• “State of the Art Resiliency: Humans are More than Hardware”

ATSPA is a non-profit trauma prevention education organization dedicated to reducing suffering, disability and death due to trauma. For more information on the conference and a full schedule visit https://www.atspa.org/schedule.