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Ireland does not have a coordinated trauma system. The MTA Governance Committee welcomes A Trauma System for Ireland: Report of the Trauma Steering Group, that was published in February 2018 and urges its prioritised implementation.
Major Trauma Audit National Report 2017
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The MTA National Report focuses specifically on the most severely injured patients in the Irish healthcare system. It presents findings from MTA in 2017, and examines data from 5,061 patients across 26 trauma receiving hospitals in Ireland. Major Trauma Audit highlights the need for change in the provision of trauma services in Ireland.
Key Recommendations
A multi-agency, multidisciplinary response is required to develop a strategy to prevent the most common mechanism of injury in Ireland: low falls. Lessons learned from policy changes in road safety, offer a model that could be applied to home safety, where the majority of low falls occur
To address the variation across the audit, each participating hospital should support the actions recommended by its local MTA governance committee.
NOCA will support hospitals to enhance and where required re-establish their local MTA governance committees.
The MTA recommends stakeholder collaboration to define the composition of a trauma team and activation criteria. Similarly, defining rehabilitation assessment and prescription is important so that standards of care can be benchmarked.