About Major Trauma

What we do

The Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH) is one of three major trauma centres designated to care for Victoria's most severely injured patients, and one of two that care for adult major traumas. 

The RMH was proud to achieve formal Level 1 Trauma Verification from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 2012, making us the first major trauma centre in the Victorian State Trauma System to achieve this status. 

We treat 4,000 trauma patients every year, with up to 1,000 of those classified as major traumas. 

Trauma injuries may include internal bleeding, brain damage, spine injuries or broken bones. Some of the common causes of trauma injuries are car, truck, bicycle or motorbike crashes, falls, assaults, workplace incidents and pedestrian incidents. 

Trauma innovations

There have been many innovations at the RMH to improve its ability to care for trauma patients:

• Helipad (opened October 2004)
• Trauma Ward with specialist single rooms for the management of patients with post-traumatic amnesia (opened 2004)
• 7 South East Ward - Trauma, Plastics, Head and Neck Oncology, Faciomaxillary
• 7 South West Ward - Trauma Orthopaedics and Elective Orthopaedics
• Two dedicated trauma rooms and new state-of-the-art monitoring system in the Emergency Department
• New CT scanners (16 detector in ED, 64 detector in radiology)
• 42 bed Intensive Care complex
• 24 hour Emergency operating theatre

Through these initiatives, the RMH Major Trauma Service is committed to quality, education and training for the multidisciplinary trauma team. The service supports many research projects and is constantly developing the trauma program as the service grows and evolves.

Trauma Registry

The Royal Melbourne Trauma Registry was established in January 1996, and now has details on more than 15,853 trauma patients.

The registry collects and collates patient information from all trauma patients admitted to the RMH who meet the criteria, those transferred to or from a hospital for acute care and those who die in the Emergency Department. Details collected range from pre-hospital through to discharge and include information such as transfer details, patient demographics, triage and clinical details, investigations, injuries, operations, complications and outcome data.

The main purpose of the registry is to provide data for ongoing quality improvement activities, to monitor service delivery and to contribute to the monitoring of trauma outcomes throughout Victoria through:

• The Victorian State Trauma Registry
• The RMH internal trauma audit meetings and quality improvement activities

The information gained from the trauma registry is aimed at assisting in the reduction of morbidity and mortality resulting from traumatic injuries.

Our team

The RMH Major Trauma Service comprises a team of surgeons, doctors, nurses and allied health staff. Our role is to coordinate patient care, tailoring it to their needs.

For example, a person may need a trauma surgeon to operate on internal bleeding, an orthopaedic surgeon to fix a badly broken bone and a neurosurgeon to operate on an injured brain.