[ investigation on quality of emergency care of head injury patients in emergency ward, Vali-e-Asr hospital, Arak 2005]

ABSTRACT

The third leading cause of mortality in developed countries is trauma which 50% of these is because of head injuries. Since the injury to the brain is not limited to the time of accident and it can be developed or exacerbated some times after the accident, therefore care and treatment of these patients especially during the emergency phase can prevent secondary injuries. So it is important to investigate the quality of these patients' care in emergency phase at hospitals. This is a descriptive study which is done during a 6 months period. It is done using a quality of care checklist which was developed for three groups of patients with mild, moderate and sever head injury .The checklist is developed based an standards of care. The quality of 693 patients' care by health care team [physicians and nurses] was evaluated during the first 24 hours of hospitalization. Four domains of care including general, neurologic, respiratory and homodynamic care were assessed by the checklist. The highest score in each domain was 10. 9 and more was considered excellent care, less than 9 to 7 good, less than 7 to 5 moderate and less than 5 poor. Data was introduced using descriptive statistics. Results showed that the health care team in the domain of general care had 7.39 [good care], in the domain of respiratory care 5.08 [moderate care] and in the domain of hemodynamic care had 7.48[good care], scores. Findings showed that although care of head injury patients was not poor but it was not excellent also, which shows some deficits in the management of these patients. It is necessary to improve the quality of care by educating health care professionals and providing enough equipment for care