Trauma at the Montreal Children's Hospital

Welcome to the Montreal Children's Hospital Trauma Website.

In 2009 searching the web has become common practice and an interactive and efficient way that people of all ages acquire information quickly. As a Trauma Center our primary responsibility is to provide excellence in pediatric and adolescent trauma care to the children and teens of Quebec, making certain that it is delivered in a timely and effective manner. We also have an important role in injury prevention which is truly the desired treatment for trauma. In fulfilling our leadership role with respect to these important mandates we felt that having a user friendly interactive trauma and injury prevention web site would be an innovative and effective way of sharing our expertise. Our new web site will provide us with the opportunity to make information accessible to: our patients and their families, the community we care for, the partnerships we develop, the regional centers in need of our experience, and our colleagues involved in clinical care and research activities elsewhere.

The Montreal Children's Hospital (MCH) of the McGill University Health Centre is a provincially designated pediatric and adolescent trauma centre, a neurotrauma centre of expertise, and an important player in the provincial trauma network. It is dedicated to its trauma mandate with its well developed Emergency Trauma Response system, commitment to accessibility of its intensive care unit (ICU), and a variety of innovative programs to meet the many aspects of comprehensive trauma care. Expertise, accessibility and speed are key components in ensuring excellent trauma care and a positive outcome.

At the MCH, over 30 departments and services are involved in trauma, providing coordinated medical, surgical, nursing, psychosocial and rehabilitation trauma expertise to children and adolescents.

Each year, more than 15,000 children and teens from throughout Quebec are treated at the MCH Emergency Department for trauma-related injuries and approximately 500 of them sustain injuries that are serious enough to require hospitalisation. On an annual basis, we receive approximately 150 trauma transfers in need of tertiary trauma expertise from regional centres. The hospital's trauma experts become involved with all of these patients as well as over 250 who are referred as out patients for consultation and a variety of specialized interventions.

Physicians from regional and adult trauma centres are encouraged to transfer serious trauma cases in need of a trauma centre level of expertise. As well, out patients can be referred to our programs for consultation and intervention of specialists.

MCH Trauma consists of 5 inter-professional programs.

Debbie Friedman
Director, Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Reporting