Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health

Trauma Statewide Clinical Network

About the network

The Trauma Statewide Clinical Network provides clinical leadership and system wide coordination to strengthen trauma care across South Australia.

We bring together the SA Trauma Services, clinicians from Local Health Networks, consumers and partner agencies to improve safety, quality and outcomes across the trauma system. We support statewide trauma governance by using data to guide improvement, promoting consistent practice, and supporting injury prevention, education and system capability.

Our role

  • Provide statewide oversight and governance of the South Australian trauma system, supporting collaboration and capability across the full trauma pathway - from injury and pre-hospital response through to emergency and acute care, rehabilitation and recovery.
  • Set trauma care priorities and support consistent, evidence‑based models of care, education and research initiatives.
  • Use trauma data, benchmarking and injury surveillance to identify injury trends, variation, risks and inform prevention and quality improvement efforts.
  • Advise SA Health on trauma policy, planning and system‑level challenges.

Our focus

  • Improving how trauma care is delivered across the full continuum, from injury through rehabilitation and recovery.
  • Reducing unwarranted variation in trauma care and outcomes, while supporting equitable care across metropolitan, regional and remote settings.

Our peo­ple

Nicole Kelly

Trauma Statewide Clinical Network Co-Lead

Nicole Kel­ly is the Trau­ma Ser­vice Nurs­ing Direc­tor at the Roy­al Ade­laide Hos­pi­tal (CAL­HN) and Co‑Lead of the South Aus­tralian Trau­ma Sys­tem and Clin­i­cal Net­work. She is an expe­ri­enced clin­i­cian with more than 24 years’ lead­er­ship across emer­gency and trau­ma nurs­ing, sys­tem gov­er­nance, and statewide ser­vice improvement.

Nicole has held promi­nent nation­al roles includ­ing Board Direc­tor for the Aus­tralian and New Zealand Trau­ma Soci­ety and the Aus­tralian and New Zealand Trau­ma Reg­istry, and con­tributes to sec­tor lead­er­ship through SA Health and the Roy­al Aus­tralasian Col­lege of Sur­geons Trau­ma Com­mit­tee. She is a Senior EMST Coor­di­na­tor and serves on the RACS Trau­ma Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Review Team.

Her career has focused on strength­en­ing trau­ma sys­tem per­for­mance, includ­ing lead­ing the devel­op­ment of the Trau­ma Nurse Case Man­ag­er mod­el in South Aus­tralia and co‑coordinating the Statewide Trau­ma Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Project. Recog­nised for her impact, Nicole received the 2024 SA Nurs­ing Mid­wifery Award for Excel­lence in Lead­er­ship and Governance.

Associate Professor Daniel Ellis

Trauma Statewide Clinical Network Co-Lead

(FACEM, FCICM, FIMC & DRTM (RCSEd), FRCS(Eng), MRCP, DMCC, GCertCU)

Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Daniel Ellis is the Direc­tor of Trau­ma at the Roy­al Ade­laide Hos­pi­tal and the Co-Chair of the Statewide South Aus­tralian Trau­ma System. 
He was pre­vi­ous­ly Clin­i­cal Direc­tor of Med­STAR – the Emer­gency Med­ical Retrieval Ser­vice.

As well as the Trau­ma role, he also works as a Pre-Hos­pi­tal & Retrieval con­sul­tant with Med­STAR, as an Inten­sivist in Cal­vary health­care and as a con­sul­tant in the Roy­al Ade­laide Emer­gency Depart­ment. Dan has worked in crit­i­cal care in Aus­tralia and the UK for 25 years. He is involved in an exten­sive port­fo­lio of Trau­ma Research and has recent­ly pub­lished the 2nd Edi­tion of his text­book in Pre-hos­pi­tal and Retrieval Medicine.

He holds Aca­d­e­m­ic appoint­ments with Ade­laide Uni­ver­si­ty, Flinders Uni­ver­si­ty and James Cook Uni­ver­si­ty, Queensland.

Trauma Statewide Clinical Network Membership

Mem­ber­ship includes rep­re­sen­ta­tion from:

  • Met­ro­pol­i­tan and statewide Local Health Networks
    • Trau­ma ser­vice med­ical representation
    • Trau­ma ser­vice nurs­ing representation
    • Addi­tion­al trau­ma lead­er­ship representation
  • Rur­al and region­al Local Health Networks
    • Med­ical representation
    • Nurs­ing representation
  • SA Ambu­lance Ser­vice (SAAS) and MedSTAR
    • Med­ical lead­er­ship representation
    • Para­medic representation
  • Pre­ven­tive Health SA
  • SA Med­ical Imag­ing (SAMI)
  • Trau­ma in Old­er Per­son Work­ing Group
  • Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Branch – Depart­ment of Health and Well­be­ing (DHW)
  • Roy­al Aus­tralasian Col­lege of Sur­geons (RACS) SA Trau­ma Committee

Addi­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives may be invit­ed as required, includ­ing acute care allied health and reha­bil­i­ta­tion ser­vices, con­sumers and peo­ple with lived expe­ri­ence, SA Health sys­tem part­ners, and oth­er agen­cies rel­e­vant to spe­cif­ic agen­da items or project work.

Subgroups
  • SA Trau­ma Reg­istry Sub-Committee

Our work

  • Updat­ing South Aus­tralian Trau­ma Team Acti­va­tion Cri­te­ria for both Adult and Pae­di­atric Trauma
  • Explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to devel­op a mod­ernised South Aus­tralian Trau­ma Registry
  • Opti­mis­ing the deliv­ery of Trau­ma Care in the Old­er Person
  • Statewide Trau­ma Tues­day Edu­ca­tion Program
  • Injury Sur­veil­lance and Pre­ven­tion ini­tia­tives includ­ing P.A.R.T.Y. Pro­gram SA
Key documents and resources

Get involved

To learn more or get involved in the Trau­ma Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work, email ceih.​trauma@​sa.​gov.​au.