Trauma experiences of rural practitioners: A self assessment.

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to identify, through self-assessment, how comfortable rural emergency medicine (EM) physicians are in treating critically ill trauma patients, the resources available to treat such patients and their comfort with performing trauma procedures.

Methods: An anonymous self-assessment survey was e-mailed to family physicians practising rural EM in Saskatchewan regarding training, hospital resources, demographics and self-reported comfort with rural trauma management. We included physicians who had provided EM care within the past year in Saskatchewan outside of the major trauma centres.