Adrienne Spiers revised techniques for assessing minor bone fractures after reading a continuing professional development article

Qualified staff on my ward run a 24-hour minor injury department. I see many hand and wrist injuries in the department and over the years I have become more confident dealing with them. This article (Larsen 2002) served as a good revision exercise. Only a minority of our patients are X-rayed. This means that history taking and accurate documentation become extremely important. Also, few people come to our unit with an obvious fracture – if they were sure they had broken a bone, most people would go straight to their local A&E unit. The people who come to us want to know if they need to do this or not.