Trauma

March 2026

The California ENA Trauma Committee met in March to review TNCC program updates, instructor monitoring processes, course logistics, and future committee goals.

California continues to see strong TNCC participation, with 4,068 students completing courses in 2025 and a 92% pass rate. Year to date in 2026, 704 students have participated, with a 90% pass rate.

The committee reviewed updates to the instructor monitor process, including new application materials available in the Connect community. Course Directors were also reminded to review course requirements, including book access expectations and the use of late book acknowledgment waivers when appropriate.

Debi Lugo presented an overview of geriatric trauma care, highlighting age-related physiologic changes, assessment challenges, fall risk, respiratory and cardiovascular considerations, neurologic injuries, spinal trauma, and the importance of understanding goals of care.

The committee also discussed future TNCC provider and instructor course opportunities, with a focus on identifying host sites in underserved areas of California. Members interested in hosting or presenting at future meetings are encouraged to contact the Trauma Committee Chair.

November 2025

The California ENA Trauma Committee continues to advance trauma nursing education, advocacy, and collaboration across the state. Our recent meeting, held on October 28, 2025, brought together trauma leaders, instructors, and educators from across California and beyond to review program performance, share innovative educational approaches, and plan for upcoming initiatives.

TNCC Program Growth and Success
Steven Jacobson reported on the ongoing success of the Trauma Nursing Core Course (TNCC) program. This year, 3,701 students successfully completed the course, with a 92% pass rate. This growth reflects the ongoing commitment of our instructors and course directors statewide, who continue to deliver high-quality trauma education that meets the needs of both urban and rural nurses.

Grant-Funded Initiatives and Educational Expansion
The committee reviewed updates on two recently approved educational grants. One grant supported a hybrid TNCC offering at El Camino, which successfully combined virtual and in-person learning modalities to improve access for nurses in diverse regions. The second grant supports the upcoming TNCC Instructor Course at Stanford Tri-Valley, scheduled for December. These initiatives highlight the committee’s continued dedication to increasing educational reach, standardization, and instructor development throughout California.

Guest Presentation: Addressing Lateral Violence in Nursing
The committee welcomed guest presenter Joselyn Martin from New Mexico, who shared an insightful session on addressing lateral violence in the workplace. Her presentation explored the use of the Johari Window model to enhance team communication and self-awareness, as well as the integration of cognitive rehearsal techniques to prepare nurses for difficult interpersonal interactions. The discussion fostered valuable reflection and generated ideas for integrating similar training into trauma education programs across the state.

Looking Ahead
In preparation for 2026, committee members confirmed that future meetings will continue to occur on the Tuesday preceding each State Council meeting at 1800 via Zoom. The next meetings are scheduled for January 6, March 10, May 12, August 4, and October 27, 2026. The committee will focus on recruiting speakers, sharing innovative teaching strategies, and expanding collaboration among trauma educators statewide.

The California ENA Trauma Committee remains committed to fostering excellence in trauma education and practice, supporting nurses in delivering safe, evidence-based care for injured patients across every setting.

May 2025

The committee met on May 13th, 2025 to review current courses and updates. Year to date there have been 1,222 students who have completed TNCC year to date with an increasing majority being in-person courses. In addition, the successful completion rate remains 92-93%, a testament to the quality of our instructors in the state! There have also been 200 Instructor Potential’s identified this year. When guiding IP’s and IC’s, there are step-by-step instructions in the ENA Connect library as well as Course Administrative Procedures.

Future participants in an instructor class will also be required to pass a short quiz on the administrative procedures at the completion of the class. Current instructors should have the ability to review the quiz. Make sure that part of your Instructor Course is information on the Course Administrative Procedures so that students are prepared.

We had a lecture on OB Trauma from Dr. Renee Smith. Future meetings will be the Tuesday before the State Council Meeting. All Instructors, Directors, and Faculty will receive an invitation to the committee meeting approximately one week prior to the meeting. Anyone else interested in attending can email trauma@californiaena.org to request the link. Future CEU topics are pending and we would be happy to have some new participants to share their knowledge.

March 2025

The Trauma Committee met on March 11th, 2025 to review current courses and updates. YTD there have been 544 TNCC students with a slight majority being in-person classes. The Trauma Nurse Advanced Course was discussed and we congratulated Evan E. and Kevin S. on completing the course as content experts with the ENA in Schaumberg recently. They were able to provide feedback about the content, materials, and organization to the ENA to incorporate into the roll-out. The course is still in the ENA Delivered model and as with any new program, there are opportunities to refine the material and better define the process.

Pending and new grant applications were presented and discussed. A clarification to the wording to better present what the grant’s goals and outcomes was also discussed. Likely updates will include position that the grant’s goals are to cover the cost of Instructor time & travel for courses with preference given to remote locations with limited access to this type of education. Clarification on mentoring for director and faculty was also discussed as well with the plan to invite those interested in upgrading their status to attend a committee meeting and join regional directors after the meeting to discuss the process of upgrading status and connect them with potential mentors.

A fundraising idea was presented as well with the idea floated of hosting a course with the instructors donating their time. Proceeds would then be donated to the council or chapter sponsoring the course. The San Francisco Chapter is trialing some courses for fundraising in the late spring.

We had an excellent CEU presentation from Catherine V. about ICE and nursing’s responsibilities. The next meeting will be May 13th, 2025 at 6pm on Zoom.

January 2025

The state trauma committee held their first meeting of 2025 on January 7^th, 2025, with a full review of last year’s TNCC statistics and a CEU Presentation by Evan Edminster that entailed discussion of various trauma case studies. We again saw an overall increase in the in-person courses with a slight decrease in participants overall. A review of the instructor scores for California was presented, with the average instructor rating out of 4 being 3.92 and 90% of Instructors having a score of 3.8 or greater. This is something to be immensely proud of and a congratulations to all instructors, directors, and faculty for hosting consistently excellent courses.

Two grant requests were reviewed and discussed with the recommendation to forward them to the Board of Directors for further consideration. The Trauma Nursing Advanced Course (TNAC) is still expected to be launched this spring with the committee having the goal of bring it to California to expand our education opportunities. As the opportunity and information comes together, the committee will begin to plan and share information.

The remainder of the committee meetings for 2025 were announced and will be posted on the website.

November 2024

The state trauma committee held their last meeting for 2025 on October 29th, 2024, with a summary of the year and an educational presentation on REBOA from Terry Liddell. For TNCC, the state saw an increase in in-person classes recently but a slight decrease in overall number of students since the last report.

The National ENA continues in its progress to prepare and revise the Trauma Nursing Advanced Course (TNAC) and it is the expectation that this course should begin to roll out in Spring of 2025. This is a brand-new course so it will take some time to begin to educate students, oriented and verify instructors and have it widely available. Steven is hoping to be able to coordinate and advocate on getting a core group of California Instructors for this course when it becomes available. If you have a location available to facilitate this in the future, please let the Trauma Committee know!

The ENA Trauma Committee was able to attend the Trauma Managers of California Association (TMAC) Meeting. This is an organization with representatives from Trauma Centers and EMS Agencies throughout the state. The committee hopes to continue to develop this relationship with TMAC with either the chair or a regional director interfacing with them on a regular basis. We will be adding Evan Edminster as a Northern California Regional Director.

Upcoming events include a request to have a TNCC Course at the CFED Conference in May and sponsorship for TCRN certification. Trauma Committee meetings dates for 2025 were posted with times to be decided. The dates are January 7th, 2025; March 11th, 2025; May 13th, 2025; July 29th, 2025; and October 28th, 2025. These meetings will be held in the evening on Zoom with a one-hour CEU activity to be included. Keep your eyes out for invites and Zoom links! The Trauma Committee Chair duties will be transitioning to Steven Jacobson for 2025 after Megan Duke and Debbie Lugo being at the helm for many years. Megan and Debbie are of course going to stay on as mentors and Regional Directors for 2025.

May 2024

The trauma committee hosted a great educational session in May. Scott Weyland DNP did his presentation of EMS to Trauma Team Handoff. The presentation was great with many follow up questions and lots of great discussion. We also had time to discuss current TNCC class numbers statewide. In April we saw an increase in in person classes but a slight dip in class numbers overall. Upcoming news: TNAC (Trauma Nursing Advanced Course) are having pilot classes now through summer. These classes are college style classes lasting 8-10 weeks (includes homework and weekly classes). After successful passing the students will be verified for 4 years. We hope to have more information soon to pass out to you! We are looking forward to our July 31st trauma committee meeting where Evan Edminster will present on Man vs. Beast. Hope to see you there!

March 2024

We discussed a small decrease in the numbers of TNCC students as compared to the last 2 years. We also discussed the grants available from the committee and clarified the purpose of these grants is to assist getting trauma education programs created. We will be posting a new application form soon to request assistance in creating a sustainable TNCC education program in areas that don’t have adequate TNCC course availability. We also had an educational presentation: Managing Chest Drainage Systems by Regional Director Brett Dodd. We are looking to provide this education asynchronously in the near future. We have presentations scheduled for future meetings on May 8, 2024, July 31, 2024, and October 29, 2024.

November 2023

We had a great committee meeting in October with robust discussion on several topics. We did an overview of the 9th edition rollout of TNCC. So far we have over 150 instructors that have successfully crossed over to the new edition! A couple of important 9th edition TNCC reminders:

1. Ensure instructors are are checking the library for most up to date class content
2. Challengers will be required to complete the modules
3. Fast track is no longer an option for students. One day renewal course for current students is going live in its place.
   Also discussed were current trends in trauma and the standardization of calcium replacement in massive transfusions. Case study and article discussion followed.

Our next Trauma committee meeting will be January 8th. Zoom link to follow.

August 2023

We had another successful Trauma Committee meeting last week with 24 participants. We discussed the new launch of 9th Edition TNCC. An email went out to all TNCC instructors on 7/31/23, this email has a link to update modules and information on steps to follow to update and become a current 9th Edition TNCC instructors. We are continuing to increase the number of students taking TNCC. January to July 2022 saw 2432 students taking TNCC while this January to July 2023 saw 2558 students taking TNCC. The Trauma Chair webinar gave us new information:

• From this point forward all challenger students will be required to complete the pre-course modules before testing.
• he Fast track option for TNCC will be discontinued with 9th Edition, instead there will be a separate class for a 1 day renewal.
• TNCC instructors must complete the 9th edition TNCC before teaching 9th Edition or the expiration date of their TNCC instructor status, whichever comes first.

Additionally we now have a great group of volunteers becoming Regional Directors. Please welcome:

• Brett Dodd
• Steven Jacobson
• Tobin Miller
• Renee Smith\
• Brandon Stinnett

Our next committee meeting is October 24, 2023 at 1800 (Pacific Time) via Zoom We hope to see you there! .Zoom link to meeting see below:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/8086162231

May 2023

We had a great Trauma Committee meeting last week with 28 participants. We discussed TNCC trends from both last year and this year. Last quarter we had 1,172 students go through TNCC! 741 in person and 431 virtually. We also had a great conversation with updates on the 9th edition TNCC course. A pilot 9th edition course was taught March 15th & 16th in San Francisco. Feedback given:

• Lectures ran mostly as expected
• Overwhelming positive feedback on the TNP scenarios- particularly starting with a simple assessment and moving to more complicated
• Positive feedback on the decreased number of teaching points in the TNP scenarios
• Written test was described as significantly more difficult that previous editions

Additionally we had Dr. Renee Smith present on her upcoming CE opportunity regard OB Trauma and give us about a 15 min sneak peak of what’s to come! It was a great discussion followed by a great Q&A session. We are thankful to everyone who made it out. Save the date for our next committee meeting August 1st at 1800!

March 2023

In the March 14, 2023 Committee meeting we had 26 people attend via Zoom. Our educational offering was delayed, and we are hoping to have it ready by the May meeting. Our plan is to have a one hour educational offering in trauma available by a link that can be accessed on demand. We looked at TNCC class statistics comparing in-person vs virtual finding that consistently there are more in-person classes than virtual classes. We also looked at the total number of students in January and February last year compared to this year and we appear to be about 35-40 students more this year than last. The new 9th Edition TNCC is due to rollout in July of this year. A pilot 9th Edition course was held in San Francisco on March 15 & 16, and we have allotted time in the May meeting to hear how that went from some of the instructors. The TNCC 9th Edition should be fully in place by October 2023.

November 2022
Good meeting today! We are happy to announce Deb Lugo is joining Megan Duke as co-chair for 2023! We are still looking for additional regional directors. If you are interested please contact us. For 2022 California has had approximately 2,844 provider courses and 127 instructor courses. More classes coming in November and December! Great job everyone!

March 2022
Course Director Updates:

• Provider expiration dates will reflect to the end of the month going forward
• You can now order up to 100 manuals without reaching out to ENA
• Students can now register with any email regardless of which one the course director gave
• Students do not need to wait for the exam link once they complete their hands on test. They can go directly into their profile and take the exam after hands on portion is completed
• Challenger modules are available, but not required
• In ENA connect there will be a monthly update in the announcement section for the most important updates
• Before an instructor course all the candidates can test up to 90 days before the instructor course. If outside of that time window you will need to retest 9th Ed. of TNCC Dates Released for 2023: Feb 28th: Last 8th edition Instructor Course Mid-April: Instructor Update Mid May: Go live for 9th edition TNCC courses July 23rd: Last day to teach 8th edition course.

January 2020
We had a GREAT committee meeting with lots of sharing best practices and collaboration. We are still awaiting dates for the new TNCC one day course launch as well as the date for when the course evaluation situation will be fixed. Stay tuned for updates! We also had an awesome discussion about what trauma orientation looks like at different institutions. Orientation programs from various institutions were shared as well as an article review on trauma documentation. Looking forward to seeing everyone in May.