Numbers attending Nenagh Injury Unit increased in 2018

Nenagh Injury Unit is one of 11 Injury Units now in place across the country. It is open 7 days a week from  8 to 8 and can treat patients aged 5 and over for a wide variety of injuries such as broken bones, dislocations, sprains, strains, and minor burns.
 
Last year 8,700 patients attended Nenagh Injury Unit and the number of patients treated has continued to increase in 2018. A total of 8,250 patients had attended by the end of October 2018, an increase of 11.1% on the corresponding period last year.
 
According to Dr Damien Ryan, Consultant in Emergency Medicine, UL Hospitals Group and Nenagh Injury Unit:
 
“The Injury Unit in Nenagh hospital provides an efficient and reliable service to patients coming to hospital with minor injury. There is a doctor and advanced nurse practitioner on duty who will reliably assess your injury, order imaging where appropriate and arrange follow-up care, where necessary. Feedback from patients is typically very positive and I encourage individuals to consider using the Injuries Unit instead of the Emergency Dept at University Hospital Limerick. The types of injuries catered for are typically falls from standing sustained during sporting or other non dangerous activity. Injuries such as those sustained in high speed car crashes for example, are not suitable and should be dealt with in Limerick.”
 
Injury Units can treat patients with broken bones, dislocations, sprains, strains, wounds, scalds and minor burns that are unlikely to need overnight admission to hospital. Staff members take x rays, reduce joint dislocations, apply plaster casts and treat wounds by stitches or other means. They provide swift access to tests and x-rays and some have rapid access to physiotherapy services.  They are staffed by Consultant led teams of doctors, advanced nurse practitioners, nurses, radiographers and physiotherapists. Patients can go directly to the Unit or be referred by a GP.
 
Dr Gerry McCarthy, Consultant in Emergency Medicine and Clinical Lead of the National Emergency Medicine programme, said: “Many Injury Units are reporting fast turnaround times for seeing and treating patients. In many cases the average time reported is between 1 and 2 hours and sometimes less so. Patients can save themselves long waiting times by attending Injury Units instead of EDs when it is appropriate to do so”
 
Explaining that each Unit is linked to a Hub Emergency Department in an acute hospital, Dr McCarthy added, “If a patient in an Injury Unit needs to be admitted to hospital they will be referred directly to a linked hospital, in exactly the same way as if they had attended the Hub Emergency Department. Our Units provide the same level of expertise and service as Emergency Departments, for the appropriate group of patients but they are not designed to treat serious head, back or neck injuries, abdominal (stomach) pain, medical illnesses or mental health problems. They do not treat children under the age of five, because of the special requirements of young children attending hospital, with some having a higher age threshold. “
 
There are eleven of these Units across the country including three in the Midwest in Ennis, Nenagh and St Johns in Limerick. Approximately one in three of all emergency presentations within UL Hospitals Group now take place within the three Injury Units.
 
Attendances continue to increase in Nenagh, Ennis and St John’s and the Injury Units have the capacity to do more still.
 
All three have had consistently good feedback and reaction from the patients they treat. There is no charge for patients with full medical cards or those patients with valid medical/GP referral letter.
 
For more information visit www.hse.ie/injuryunits