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Trauma patients fail to receive 'good care'
A report published by The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death has announced that more than half of trauma patients do not receive good care.
The study examined the treatment of 795 patients and found that medical staff in 200 hospitals in, and did not understand the severity and showed very little sign of urgency.
Many of the problems identified were related to staff being too inexperienced.
However they also reveal that around 800 trauma patients a year are transferred to other hospitals because of lack of specialist facilities such as neurological services.
The existing Government policy regarding centralised services is controversial as it suggests that a whole host of other services such as maternity and A&E are to be centralised as well.
WBW Solicitors' clinical negligence expert, Jane Couch comments that "There is a fine balance between distance causing delays and thus putting patients in a worse position and being treated by inexperienced A&E teams who fail to diagnose the patients complaint which could put the patient in a worse position. Is Government policy to regionalise A&E departments the correct approach? – Probably, yes in our opinion if it is based on Clinical Studies as oppose to cost cutting exercises".