Critical Bytes: Scene to St Elsewhere's - the unfolding event of a mass casualty incident

One incident. Multiple patients. Five clinical settings. Every decision counts.

A coach rolls over on a regional highway, leaving approximately 30 passengers requiring assessment and care. As emergency services respond, a complex chain of clinical decisions begins, stretching from the roadside to retrieval, emergency department, operating theatre and intensive care.

In this 90-minute Critical Bytes webinar, we follow the incident as it unfolds, cutting between locations to explore the challenges of managing multiple trauma patients under pressure.

Three key patients form the clinical thread: a child with severe traumatic brain injury and tension pneumothorax, an adult with life-threatening pelvic haemorrhage, and an older patient whose initially less urgent injuries evolve into serious complications.

But not every patient is immediately recognised.

As the incident unfolds, participants will be challenged to identify missed clinical cues, reconsider initial assessments and make decisions about treatment priorities, resource allocation and escalation of care.

What you will learn 

Through a dynamic, case-based discussion, this session will explore: 

• initial scene assessment, mass casualty triage and reassessment
• management of time-critical injuries, including traumatic brain injury, tension pneumothorax and haemorrhagic shock
• prehospital resuscitation, retrieval and destination decisions
• emergency department surge management and competing resuscitation priorities
• damage control surgery and operating theatre prioritisation
• intensive care management of complex trauma, including neuroprotection, acute kidney injury and renal replacement therapy
• recognition of occult injuries, under-triage and evolving deterioration
• cognitive biases, multidisciplinary communication and staff wellbeing during major incidents

Why you should attend 

Mass casualty incidents demand more than clinical knowledge. They require rapid prioritisation, effective teamwork, situational awareness and the ability to adapt as new information emerges.

Using a single unfolding scenario, this webinar brings together the perspectives of healthcare professionals working across the trauma pathway form those at the scene to those providing ongoing care in the first 24 hours and beyond.

Interactive decision points will challenge participants to consider what they would do next, what information they might be missing and how their decisions could influence patient outcomes.

Whether you work at the roadside, in retrieval, emergency, theatre or intensive care, this session offers an opportunity to examine the clinical and human factors that shape trauma care.