Trauma Care Transitions: A Clinical Audit in a Pakistani Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

Introduction: Clinical auditing practices are recognized universally as a useful tool in evaluating and improving the quality of care provided by a health service. Methodology: We assessed the quality of weekly handover practices of trauma patients in our orthopedic department, implemented changes, and re-assessed for improvement. We undertook a prospective study using the Royal College of Surgeons of England’s advice on safe handovers as minimal requirements, which include name, date of birth, patient location, responsible consultant, resuscitation plan, current diagnosis, operational issues like intensive care unit (ICU) beds availability, and results of pending investigations. Results: A total of 20 admissions were investigated during the first week (May 01, 2021, to May 07, 2021). The standard in general of handover was very unsatisfactory, particularly, date of admission (42%), responsible consultant name (28%), condition of the patient at time of handover (47%), name of patient (66%), operational issues (61%), result of pending investigations (76%) were all under the expected standard (80%). After the Implementation of the electronic handover proforma, it was examined again for a one-week period (June 20, 2021, to June 26, 2021). This time, 25 patients were included in the process. There is only one criterion to fall under the standard 95% was the results of pending investigations (84%). The electronic proforma was used 100%. Conclusion: The handover of trauma admissions was significantly enhanced and reduced the risk to patients. This tool has been shown to be a rapid, simple, accurate, and cost-effective method to improve communication in a complex, large trauma center.