BAPS Trauma Network – new lead

Erica Makin FRCS (Paeds)

Consultant Paediatric Surgeon

King’s College Hospital, London

Trauma is the leading cause of death in children and young adults in the UK and of course in many cases entirely preventable. Its care in the UK has been heavily stratified in the past decade with the establishment of Major Trauma Centres (MTC) from 2010. Currently, there are 10 MTCs in England for adults and children and a further 5 who are children only. Scotland has a network of 4 centres, and Northern Ireland and Wales one each. However, an individual paediatric surgeon’s exposure to trauma varies considerably across the paediatric surgical network, with some hospitals where the first response team invariably has a member from the paediatric surgical team, and others where there might be only very limited contact and then only in the younger child.

The BAPS Trauma Network plays an important role in dissemination of knowledge and experience throughout the country and Erica Makin has recently been appointed as its Trauma lead. Erica has been a consultant for 11 years, initially at The Royal London Hospital and now at King’s College Hospital. Both centres are the two busiest Major Trauma Centres in the UK.

She brings great experience of the London trauma scene and has been clinical lead for paediatric trauma for the SELKaM network for the last 4 years and is integral to the TARN Foundation – a fantastic repository of relevant statistics and data (2).

It is very important that wherever one is in the country standards of trauma care are maintained and the BAPS Trauma network provides those links and working relationships, developed over the years in delivering a high-quality paediatric trauma service to children and young adults. One important element of this is education and training and Erica was the co-founder of the advanced trauma simulation course held at the Royal London Hospital every six months.

Erica Makin