title: St Augustine's a South African trauma unit.
abstract: As a hospital resuscitation officer, I have a keen interest in all types of resuscitation to include trauma and prehospital care. My background is critical care nursing and I have undertaken the majority of advanced life support based courses, but like most of my colleagues our exposure to major trauma, especially penetrating trauma, is variable. Frimley Park Hospital is a 700 bedded district general hospital and our A&E department sees over 70,000 patients per year. On average, I will attend five clinical emergencies per week with the majority being medical. This mix of emergencies is common to all UK hospitals and even in large hospitals, such as The North Staffordshire Infirmary only 0.2 per cent of the work load is life-threatening injury ( Redmond 1997 ). The majority of UK trauma is blunt in origin and, although we tend to operate a system of trauma teams, there are still deficiencies in our care of trauma patients. I believe that part of the problem is lack of exposure.