Major Trauma Audit national report 2019 and 2020

The Major Trauma Audit (MTA) is a clinically led audit established by the National Office of Clinical Audit (NOCA) in 2013. This audit focuses on the care of the more severely injured trauma patients in Ireland’s healthcare system. The methodological approach for the MTA is provided by the Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN), based in the University of Manchester, United Kingdom (UK). In 2016, the MTA became the first national clinical audit endorsed by the National Clinical Effectiveness Committee (NCEC) and mandated by the Minister for Health. </p

Major Trauma Audit paediatric report 2014-2019

This report provides the first comprehensive analysis of paediatric major trauma in the Irish population. This is timely, given the opportunities for improving care for traumatically injured children throughout Ireland presented by the new children’s hospital, as this will be the single paediatric major trauma centre for the State. The report highlights that paediatric major trauma is of low frequency, at 5% of the overall trauma caseload for the 26 participating Irish hospitals. This represents a challenge in ensuring that healthcare institutions have the required expertise, preparedness and practice for presentations and procedures that happen relatively infrequently. The report also highlights the volume of major trauma patients attending model 3 and level 4 hospitals outside of Dublin and the need for on-site expertise and rapid transport services to get critically injured children to the right place at the right time. The MTA will continue to inform the reconfiguration of the Irish trauma system so that it is continuously modifying and improving, driven by the data and outcomes of MTA reports, in order to ensure equity of access to efficient and high-quality care for the children and adults of Ireland. A key finding from this report has been the many preventable mechanisms of injury leading to major trauma in children. Disseminating injury prevention messages to key groups and programmes will be a key focus for the audit. Moving forward, the MTA will work to support hospital MTA governance committees to use the data to identify areas of variation and develop QIPs to improve care