improvements in the management of trauma patients with the introduction of a lower limb trauma coordinator

a b s t r a c t mortality and morbidity from trauma continues to be a serious, ubiquitous public health problem. our short communication reports on the benefits of a dedicated lower limb trauma coordinator (lltc) to the trauma service of a busy inner-london plastics unit. this is based on a retrospective case-note based audit; performed 19 months prior to the introduction of the lltc and for 16 months after. after the introduction of a lltc our statistical analysis demonstrated a significant improvement in trauma timings in terms of injury to referral time, time to first plastics operation and duration of inpatient stay. this suggests the use of a fully qualified nurse with an orthopaedic background as a coordinator may prove to be highly advantageous over a non-clinical administrator improving the overall journey of the lower limb trauma patient in the english national health service.