COMBAT TRAUMA LIFE-SUPPORT TRAINING VERSUS THE ORIGINAL ADVANCED TRAUMA LIFE-SUPPORT COURSE - THE IMPACT OF ENHANCED CURRICULUM ON FINAL STUDENT SCORES

Background: Within a military framework, the trauma course student, a young medical officer, is trained to become a trauma team leader and t he first provider of medical aid. By adding battlefield medicine-relat ed subjects to the basic Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) course, a s well as exercises tailored to the distinctive demands of military me dicine, we could develop a special teaching unit: Combat Trauma Life S upport (CTLS). The curriculum is basically the complete unchanged ATLS course of the American College of Surgeons enriched with lectures and practicums to fill the gap between the essentially civilian emergency department character of the ATLS course and the military tasks of the medical officer, Purpose of Study: To compare the cognitive knowledge achievements of trauma course participants in the Israel Defence Forc e Medical Corps and to delineate the impact of the course type on stud ents' written test results, Design: A retrospective comparison analysi s of pre- and post-course written test scores of 2,614 physicians who had participated in the ATLS and CTLS courses in the Israel Defence Fo rce School of Military Medicine between 1990 and 1993. Results: The an alysis indicated that students who undertook the CTLS course achieved statistically better results in written tests (87.9 +/- 8.7 vs, 79.6 /- 11.4, R-2 = 0.33), Conclusions: We conclude that the CTLS comprehen sive curriculum provides an improved training basis for the complex ta sk of army battlefield trauma care support.