• To refresh your knowledge of the crucial components of hand injury assessment
• To reflect on the complexity of hand injury assessment and the importance of accurate referrals to tertiary care
• To gain awareness of the hand injury assessment training needs of emergency department clinicians
Hand injury is a common presentation in the emergency department (ED). The accurate assessment of hand injuries is essential to ensure optimal management, which may need to include referral to a tertiary trauma centre. However, hand injury assessment can be challenging, particularly in children. A better understanding of the accuracy of hand injury referrals to tertiary care can help improve clinical practice and clinician training.
This article reports on a service improvement project that aimed to determine the accuracy of hand injury referrals from EDs and general practices to a tertiary trauma centre. The retrospective investigation found the accuracy of referrals to be high, but also identified areas where hand injury assessment required improvement, one of them being the training of clinicians referring complex cases to tertiary care.
Emergency Nurse. doi: 10.7748/en.2021.e2065
Peer reviewThis article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software
Correspondenceryan.faderani.13@alumni.ucl.ac.uk
Conflict of interestNone declared
Faderani R, Kanapathy M, Mosahebi A (2021) Hand injury: investigating the accuracy of referrals to a specialist trauma centre. Emergency Nurse. doi: 10.7748/en.2021.e2065
Acknowledgement The authors would like to thank Rhys Whelan for contributing to their investigation by conducting a search of the literature on hand injury referrals from primary care. Evidence search: hand injury referrals from primary care, Rhys Whelan, 16 September 2020, Bwrdd Iechyd Prifysgol Bae Abertawe Library Services, Abertawe/Swansea, Wales
Published online: 26 January 2021
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