Division of Trauma & Acute Care Surgery

In the Division of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, we care for more than 2,000 critically injured trauma patients each year admitted to the Trauma Center at NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island. As a state-designated Level 1 Trauma Center, verified by the American College of Surgeons, we provide treatment for the most serious injuries including motor vehicle collisions, industrial incidents, intentional injury, falls, and other life-threatening trauma. Our facility is equipped with the full range of resources to treat any type of critical injury.

Our mission is to provide comprehensive care using immediate and, if needed, resuscitative measures. Our goal is to provide early assessment and stabilization of all patients with traumatic injuries as well as comprehensive treatment of the critically injured. The Department of Surgery emphasizes the role and function of the trauma service in all surgical staff recruitment, demonstrating the department’s commitment to the service.

Trauma and Acute Care Clinical Services

Taking care of the injured is a complex responsibility that involves a skilled multidisciplinary team. Our trauma service is staffed by expert personnel who are committed to providing high-level, comprehensive care to our patients. We have developed systems to ensure that patients with acute injuries quickly receive initial care, and that doctors with highly sophisticated skills are available to provide individualized treatment.

Our trauma service consists of surgeons who are double board-certified in trauma and acute care surgery as well as critical care; advanced care practitioners who are specially trained to care for patients with trauma; surgical residents; and rotating medical students. Along with emergency medicine physicians and surgical subspecialists in neurosurgery, orthopedics, vascular surgery, plastic surgery, oral and maxillofacial surgery, and others, we are ready 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to care for any patient.

Nurses at NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island also have a key role in the success of the trauma service. Through a joint effort between the surgical and emergency nursing teams, we practice staff recruitment and training specific to trauma nursing. The highly skilled functioning of the nursing component of our trauma service is integral to the safety and wellbeing of patients with traumatic injuries.

Trauma and Acute Care Surgery Education

The trauma service is actively involved in teaching and research activities. Our faculty offer educational opportunities to medical students, surgical residents, and clinical fellows who are pursuing surgical subspeciality training.

At NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island, we are dedicated to training the surgeons of the future, including those focusing on trauma and acute care surgery or bariatric surgery. NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine’s General Surgery Residency is a dynamic program in which residents are exposed to the array of injuries seen at our Level 1 Trauma Center. Surgical residents are trained to care for critically injured patients who require surgery while also learning about the social determinants of health. Our program teaches residents and rotating medical students and physician assistants how to become leaders in their field. Our surgical residency has demonstrated its competitiveness with an outstanding fellowship match rate in our graduating residents.

The Trauma Center at NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island is dedicated to educating early-career surgeons. Our team provides a robust didactic experience that includes daily table rounds with educational presentations, weekly trauma and American College of Surgeons continuing medical education lectures, monthly trauma morbidity and mortality conferences, and quarterly emergency medical services conferences focused on our pre-hospital colleagues. Residents and students learn how to research and present topics and are encouraged to become involved in research projects led by the division. We are a center for Advanced Trauma Life Support and Trauma Nursing Core Course.

At the center of any trauma institution is a commitment to injury prevention. Led by the Injury Prevention and Outreach Nurse, the division is extensively involved in outreach education and leads Stop the Bleed and Fall Prevention programs for our local communities.

Trauma and Acute Care Surgery Research

Part of our commitment to leading a Level 1 Trauma Center is a focus on research. The Trauma Center at NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island is dedicated to research that improves our ability to provide quick and effective care, and we are involved in multiple studies that focus on areas such as outcomes in trauma surgery and emergency general surgery. We are active participants in national research programs and currently lead a national study on intimate partner violence in older adults. This study focuses on the screening and documentation of interpersonal violence in older trauma patients.

Other areas of research include hip fracture outcomes, radiographic studies and older trauma patients, intimate partner violence, delirium, COVID-19 and trauma, technology in trauma activation, obesity and trauma, and traumatic brain injury.