• Irish medical journal · Feb 2005

    Multicenter Study

    Changes in trauma service workload since the introduction of the penalty points system.

    • M Donnelly, P Murray, and S Cleary.
    • Dept of Orthopaedics, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin 9. mdonnelly@rcsi.ie
    • Ir Med J. 2005 Feb 1; 98 (2): 53-4.

    AbstractWith the introduction of the penalty points system (PPS) has come many media reports indicating a reduction in road traffic accident (RTA) rates. We hypothesised that reduced RTAs would result in a reduction in hospital trauma workloads. To study this we examined the numbers of RTA related femoral shaft fracture presentations to the six Dublin teaching hospitals and Waterford regional hospital within the six months since the introduction of the PPS and the two previous corresponding six month periods. We also analysed all RTA related discharges from Beaumont hospital during these three time periods. Whilst a slight reduction in RTA related femoral shaft fracture numbers was observed a dramatic reduction in total RTA related discharges from Beaumont hospital was identified with 70 patients discharged in the first six months since the introduction of the PPS compared to 124 and 125 discharges in the same two preceding six month periods. This reduction was greatest for head and thoracic injuries which were halved, while total numbers of limb injuries were maintained, resulting in no reduction in orthopaedic RTA related discharges or workload.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…