Trauma service delays and clinical negligence

Going into hospital with traumatic injuries is always going to be a distressing experience. What can mitigate this is receiving prompt and efficacious care, affording you the very best chance at complete rehabilitation. Yet there are concerns, expressed by the Royal College of Orthopaedic Surgeons, that some patients in English NHS hospitals are being subject to potentially damaging delays, something which in a number of cases may even constitute clinical negligence.

Top-down targets are being blamed by some for the situation, with emphases on caring for local patients in accident and emergency wards sometimes resulting in specialist trauma teams being unable to deliver quick, necessary care to patients transferred to their hospitals suffering from traumatic injuries.

In 2008, Professor Chris Moran, of the British Orthopaedic Association, commented, "The current system does not work.

"Patients are frequently denied access because the units are already full and are instead stuck on hidden waiting lists until a bed becomes free.

"These patients are not a priority as units are under no obligation to take on emergency cases from another hospital."

For example, patients with traumatic fractures who receive immediate stabilisation then setting of their injuries have an 80% recovery rate and are able to avoid permanent disability. After 10 days the figure falls to 50%, while after 21 days it nears zero.

This is worrying in light of the fact that the English NHS hospital average is between 10 and 20 days.

A spokesperson from the Department of Health commented, "We recognise that trauma services fall short of what should be expected.

"That is why the NHS is now taking forwarded the development of trauma centres and we are appointing a specialist 'trauma tsar' to lead nationally on trauma policy.

"It is not the case that trauma care suffers because priority is given to elective surgery. It is not an either or."

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