TCAA Board Members and members blanketed Capitol Hill on June 28 during the association's annual Lobby Day, meeting with more than 70 Congressional offices to promote TCAA's advocacy messages. During these meetings, TCAA members educated legislators and their staff about trauma care, the value of receiving care for a traumatic injury at a trauma center, and the growing concern that the federal government has not made necessary investments in trauma, leaving a fragile trauma system to falter. TCAA members conveyed to members of Congress that the combination of market pressures and reduced reimbursement, as well as a growing shortage of on-call specialists, may result in a "perfect storm" of closures, with 30 percent of the nation's trauma centers having already closed between 1990 and 2005.

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Each year the Society of Trauma Nurses presents the Trauma Leadership Award. The award recognizes an individual, in the medical or non-medical field, who has demonstrated outstanding leadership in trauma through practice, research, publication, education, patient advocacy, injury prevention, trauma system development or legislative involvement during his or her career at a local, state or national level.

The society is proud to announce the 2012 recipient is Kathryn T Von Rueden, MS, RN, ACNS-BC, FCCM, associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing and Interim Specialty Director of the Trauma/Critical Care/ED Advanced Practice Nurse graduate program.

Read more: STN Trauma Leadership Award