A successful road safety program run by Western Australia's top trauma unit could close because of a lack of funding.

The program, known as PARTY (Prevent Alcohol and Risk-related Trauma in Youth), is run by Royal Perth Hospital (RPH) and gives students between years 10 and 12 a first-hand look at the journey of a road trauma victim.

Adapted from a Canadian program, it focuses on teenage drivers and shows them the real-life consequences of risk-taking behaviour.

Since being established in WA, the program has spread to other states.

But with the shift to an activity-based funding model, where hospitals are only funded for the medical work they do, the program is now in danger of closing.

The RPH program costs around $190,000 a year, with an additional $118,000 used to fund similar efforts in selected country hospitals.

The director of state trauma at RPH, Dr Sudhakar Rao, said it was a low-cost program with a high impact.

"If you avoided two admissions of major trauma, you'd pay for the program," he said.

Maxine Burrell is the trauma program manager at RPH and outlined the PARTY initiative to a parliamentary committee investigating the effectiveness of road safety measures this week.

Ms Burrell told the committee the program was successful and popular with schools.

"We take them through hospital to follow the journey of the trauma patient," she said.

"They come through the emergency department, they see all the sights and sounds of what goes on in emergency."

RPH emergency doctors demonstrate on a medical manikin the interventions and intubation required for a trauma patient.

Students get trauma patients' perspectives

The students see severely injured patients in the RPH intensive care unit.

"Things can get quite emotional up there," Ms Burrell said.

"They obviously can't talk to the patients because they're unconscious, on ventilators, but they can talk to the families. So that's quite powerful."

The students meet a trauma patient who shares their personal experience, as well as others whose lives have been forever changed by an accident.

"One powerful one is the mother of a son who was involved in an accident and actually killed a family of five," she said.

"So she comes and talks from a mother's perspective."

The program runs for 38 weeks of the year, with one school visiting the hospital each week.

"For every school that's booked in we have a school on the waiting list," she said.

Albany and Geraldton will commence the program later this year, and RPH hopes to then expand it to Karratha.

"We want to continue the rural expansion program [which] has proved to be very popular and is growing in demand," she said.

Ms Burrell said the existing funding for the program will run out at the end of June.

South Metropolitan Health Service chief executive Frank Daly said in a statement the service would seek "ongoing funding options such as sponsorship".

He said the program had received good feedback from teenagers.