Lee Health Touch-A-Truck event educates families on Trauma Awareness

These trucks may seem cool at first glance, but when you see them driving by on the street with sirens on, you know someone is in need of urgent help.

But on Saturday morning, those sirens were ringing to celebrate Lee Health Trauma Center’s 30 years of service and to provide the public with trauma education and prevention methods.

“Part of our day, our 8, 10, 12-hour day, every day, is we come here,” said Florida Highway Patrol deputy Greg Bueno, “and this is the trauma hospital for Southwest Florida, the main trauma hospital. And it’s tragic. You know, there are many next-of-kin notifications we’ve done in the building behind you. And we don’t want to do anymore.”

Families were invited to learn about the ins and outs of Lee Health‘s trauma response operations.

From car accidents and drownings to slip and falls, trauma is the leading cause of death between the ages of 1 to 44.

“This past year, we had 4,500 in our trauma registry. We’re thinking we’re gonna make it up to about 5,000 this year,” said Injury Prevention Resource Coordinator Syndi Bultman. “So it keeps increasing as our population is increasing.”

After thirty years of serving patients from Charlotte, Collier, Glades, Hendry, and Lee counties, Bultman says the trauma center has always been there to help, but now they need work education because prevention is needed.

“I decided to take on the injury prevention role because I had seen enough. We needed to do something about it,” said Bultman, “Because tragedies happen quickly, and you can’t change that clock back to make a different decision.”

All month long, Lee Health will be holding multiple events to spread awareness of trauma.

The next event will be Coffee Talk with a Trauma Doctor on Friday, May 17.