Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH) is a busy acute public hospital with close to 3,000 emergency general surgery and trauma admissions every year. KTPH has offered a dedicated acute surgical unit known as the Emergency Surgery and Trauma (ESAT) since 2014.
Emergency and trauma surgery is usually urgent in nature and performed on very sick patients. Compared with the conventional system, where all emergency surgeries are attended to by the surgeon on call in addition to his or her daily elective workload, ESAT has a dedicated team. This effectively allocates resources to provide prompt and timely care for patients. In 2018 and 2019, the ESAT team was featured at the NHG Team Recognition Awards (Bronze and Gold) respectively for its commitment to improving the emergency surgery and trauma care.