Reducing attendance at trauma clinics by providing first-point-of-contact treatment
Intended for healthcare professionals
Evidence and practice    

Reducing attendance at trauma clinics by providing first-point-of-contact treatment

Angela O’Neill Specialist clinical educator, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford, England
Leigh Harrhy Clinical lead, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford, England

In 2016, the urgent and ambulatory care service in Oxfordshire formed part of a cross-organisational partnership working group. The group consisted of Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust community minor injury units (MIUs) at Abingdon and Witney, and Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUH) trauma and orthopaedic specialties and emergency department (ED). The aim was to redesign fracture management pathways and delivery of definitive care at patients’ first point of contact with the NHS. This article discusses the implementation of the trauma pathways in two of Oxfordshire’s community MIUs.

In total, a range of seven common fracture pathways seen in the ED and community MIUs were redesigned so that patients were treated definitively at the first point of contact and discharged with a safety net supported by leaflets; a direct contact facility to OUH trauma specialties was part of the safety net allowing patients to self-refer to the trauma clinic if they had any concerns. In total, 513 patients were treated and discharged on see, treat and discharge fracture pathways in the first year of pathway operation, which represented a 21% decrease in patient referral rates to the trauma clinic at OUH compared with the previous year.

Emergency Nurse. doi: 10.7748/en.2019.e1946

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and has been checked for plagiarism using automated software

Correspondence

angieoneill22@gmail.com

Conflict of interest

None declared

O’Neill A, Harrhy L (2019) Reducing attendance at trauma clinics by providing first-point-of-contact treatment. Emergency Nurse. doi: 10.7748/en.2019.e1946

Published online: 11 June 2019

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