title: Effect of Advanced Trauma Life Support program on medical interns' performance in simulated trauma patient management.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Since appropriate and time-table methods in trauma care have an important impact on patients'outcome, we evaluated the effect of Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) program on medical interns' performance in simulated trauma patient management.
  
  
  METHODS
  A descriptive and analytical study before and after the training was conducted on 24 randomly selected undergraduate medical interns from Imam Reza Hospital in Mashhad, Iran. On the first day, we assessed interns' clinical knowledge and their practical skill performance in confronting simulated trauma patients. After 2 days of ATLS training, we performed the same study and evaluated their score again on the fourth day. The two findings, pre- and post- ATLS periods, were compared through SPSS version 15.0 software. P values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Our findings showed that interns'ability in all the three tasks improved after the training course. On the fourth day after training, there was a statistically significant increase in interns' clinical knowledge of ATLS procedures, the sequence of procedures and skill performance in trauma situations (P less than 0.001, P equal to 0.016 and P equal to 0.01 respectively).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  ATLS course has an important role in increasing clinical knowledge and practical skill performance of trauma care in medical interns.
authors.affiliation: Emergency Medicine, Alborz University of Medical Sciences, Karaj, Iran.
authors.forename: Koorosh
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ahmadi
authors.forename: Mohammad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sedaghat
authors.forename: Mahdi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Safdarian
authors.forename: Amir-Masoud
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Hashemian
authors.forename: Zahra
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Nezamdoust
authors.forename: Mohammad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vaseie
authors.forename: Vafa
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Rahimi-Movaghar
mesh_terms: D061906:Advanced Trauma Life Support Care; D002983:Clinical Competence; D006801:Humans; D007318:Inservice Training; D016544:Patient Simulation; D013337:Students, Medical; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy*