Patient-Oriented Practice-Based Research Unit for Optimal Practices in Critical Care Neurology and Trauma

PI: Alexis F. Turgeon

Worldwide, trauma represents an enormous health and economic burden with more than 1.4M deaths in road traffic accidents and staggering health care costs of $25 billion in Canada alone. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is not only the cause of most trauma deaths, but also of severe permanent impairments in survivors and of high health care resource utilization.

Current management guidelines are based on limited evidence, and practice is highly variable with significant outcome differences across centres. Considering our limited success at saving lives and improving outcomes, there is a vital need to appraise novel practices, define effective interventions, and implement evidence-based management strategies for critically ill patients with TBI and their loved ones.

The vision of this Patient-Oriented Practice-Based Research Unit for Optimal Practices in Critical Care Neurology and Trauma is to improve bedside management, practices, morbidity, and survival in critically ill patients with TBI. This vision will be accomplished by generating and adopting evidence to inform clinical decision-making. This program is embedded in the Canada Research Chair in Critical Care Neurology and Trauma and directly targets patient-oriented applied research for critically ill neurotrauma patients to improve the quality of TBI care globally.

The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) offers a unique opportunity to foster a greater Canadian international leadership by building this unique research infrastructure – from knowledge synthesis and evaluative research methods to physiopathological and mechanistic research as well as mixed-method qualitative research to large scale clinical datasets to improve patient care and clinical decision-making for brain injured Canadians and their families.