Sensemaking Approaches to Improving Processes of Emergency Medical Trauma Centers

Abstract Trauma Center (TC) operations at hospitals are conducted as part of very complex environments. TCs, which are focused on life-saving and resuscitative actions in the treatment of trauma patients, engage many individuals in the solving of multifaceted and on-going ill-structured problems. The solutions to these problems are comprised of multiple human experts" resources that must collaborate to be effective in reducing complexity and providing information for systemic approaches to acute injury care. Understanding an emergency situation requires interdisciplinary and collaborative judgments, surgical decision-making in complex scenarios, hands on practical experience, and insight into difficult trauma situations. This paper addressed the application of collaborative sensemaking (CS) techniques to improve the decision making processes in TCs complex environments