Performance Improvement in Combat Casualty Care

Abstract

The purpose of this review is to examine the necessity for performance improvement and its application in combat casualty care. The review looks at this from the perspectives of local and system-wide efforts. Performance improvement efforts contributed to the overall improvement in mortality seen during the past 15 years of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. While many efforts started at a local level, they expanded to theater-wide efforts. These efforts became codified in the Joint Trauma System Clinical Practice Guidelines. Recent studies have shown the need for continual examination of the system to assure optimal performance. Performance improvement is an inherent responsibility of those providing combat casualty care. Large, theater-wide efforts have been carried out under the guise of the Joint Trauma System with resultant improvements in both the processes and the outcomes. Local performance improvements remain just as integral and have been come increasingly critical over the past few years.