You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 28, Issue 8
  • Minor head injury in the Republic of Ireland: evaluation of written information given at discharge from emergency departments

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Short report
Minor head injury in the Republic of Ireland: evaluation of written information given at discharge from emergency departments
  1. Tom Peachey1,
  2. Carol A Hawley1,
  3. Matthew Cooke1,
  4. Lynda Mason1,
  5. Richard Morris2
  1. 1Emergency Care and Systems Improvement Group, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
  2. 2Headway, Nottingham, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Carol Hawley, Principal Research Fellow, Emergency Care and Systems Improvement Group, Health Sciences Research Institute, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK; c.a.hawley{at}warwick.ac.uk

Abstract

Most patients presenting to the emergency department with minor head injuries are discharged with written information. Here the quality of minor head injury discharge leaflets in the Republic of Ireland is evaluated against a nationally accepted template. There was great variability in leaflet content. Most provided minimal information on emergency symptoms but 60% contained no information on post-concussional symptoms. No leaflet was available in audio-format or languages other than English. Information provided in minor head injury leaflets should be improved and standardised across Ireland.

  • Head injury
  • emergency care
  • information
  • discharge
  • Emergency care systems, emergency departments
  • paramedics, guidelines
  • Trauma
  • Trauma, head

https://doi.org/10.1136/emj.2010.093872

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Funding The University of Warwick Undergraduate Research Scholarship Scheme awarded TP a scholarship to carry out the study.

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.