UNIVERSITY Hospital Limerick has won the inaugural Golden Hip Award for their excellent standards in dealing with painful hip fractures.
The award was presented for best compliance with the national standards in 2017 and was presented in Dublin at the annual Irish Hip Fracture Meeting.
Hip fractures are common injuries in older people and have significant consequences for life and quality of life.
There were 3,497 people who suffered a broken hip in Ireland in 2017, 302 of them treated in UHL.
UHL performed above the national average on every standard apart from patients having surgery within 48 hours of presentation and a quality improvement plan is in place to address this.
Orthopaedic surgeons now have access to a dedicated operating theatre on Sundays to help with improving achievement of this standard. It is hoped that by the end of March 2019 there will be a full 7 day trauma theatre in effect.The Irish Hip Fracture Database (IHFD) monitors standards of care against international standards. It is a clinically led web-based audit and since its establishment has been driving improvements in care for hip fracture patients across the board.
As the hospital which achieved the highest number of patients who met all six hip fracture standards in 2017, UHL was awarded the inaugural Golden Hip Award.
Management of hip fracture patients involves many grades of staff working collaboratively to ensure patients have the best outcome.
This includes paramedics, ED staff, orthopaedics/trauma, geriatricians and acute physicians, physiotherapists and other allied health professionals, rehabilitation services and home helps.
Paula Lynch, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Orthopaedics, University Hospital Limerick, said : “It is a huge honour for UHL to receive the inaugural Golden Hip Award. As a team we pride ourselves in continually advocating for our hip fracture patients. Our goal is to deliver holistic care that is in line with current international best practice. While continued improvement in needed in this area, we will aim to keep improving on standards.”
