AB099. SOH21AS153. Trauma assessment clinic in the time of COVID, enhancing collaboration between Orthopaedic and Emergency Department colleagues
Orthopaedic Session II

AB099. SOH21AS153. Trauma assessment clinic in the time of COVID, enhancing collaboration between Orthopaedic and Emergency Department colleagues

Peggy Emily Miller1, Robert Hurley2, Paula McQuail2, Ian Callanan3, Kieran O’Shea1

1Department of Trauma and Orthopaedics, St. Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland; 2Department of Trauma and Orthopaedics, University Hospital Galway, Galway, Ireland; 3Clinical Audit, St. Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland

Background: Trauma assessment clinics (TAC) have been proposed over the past decade as a solution to the high volume of patients attending traditional fracture out-patient appointments. In the wake of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) guidelines from the Health Service Executive (HSE) and British Orthopaedic Association (BOA) were given recommending a reduction in the number of out-patient appointments, where appropriate.

Methods: Following introduction of a virtual TAC in collaboration between Emergency Department (ED) staff and the Orthopaedic Department at a large tertiary trauma centre, we looked at the number of out-patient clinic attendances avoided and time to in-person fracture clinic appointments from presentation to ED.

Results: From a fracture clinic perspective, 33% of patients were discharged directly with no follow up required. For the remaining patients the average time to outpatient attendance changed from 7 days (average prior to TAC) to 17 days. This reduction resulted in 1 less patient attendance in the fracture clinic per patient. Following our first 6 weeks of data collection, the proforma was altered to encourage specific collection of information and increase accessibility and quality of data collected for both departments.

Conclusions: Introduction of TAC allowed the Orthopaedic department to reduce out-patient attendances during the COVID pandemic, in line with guidelines. With our proforma ED staff may reduce time taken to manage these patients and also reduce re-attendance at ED for the same injury. Change in trends following proforma alteration allows us to propose a specific and detailed proforma which could be used by other hospitals or departments in the introduction of virtual clinics.

Keywords: Virtual fracture clinic (VFC); trauma assessment clinic (TAC); fracture clinic; trauma assessment clinic proforma; emergency department attendance

Acknowledgments

Funding: None.

Footnote

Conflicts of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical Statement: The authors are accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

doi: 10.21037/map-21-ab099
Cite this abstract as: Miller PE, Hurley R, McQuail P, Callanan I, O’Shea K. SOH21AS153. Trauma assessment clinic in the time of COVID, enhancing collaboration between Orthopaedic and Emergency Department colleagues. Mesentery Peritoneum 2021;5:AB099.

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