New factsheet: Minor head injury discharge advice
15 May 2009
Headway has produced a factsheet for adults discharged from A&E after a minor head injury, in the hope that the document will be widely taken up by Emergency Departments.
The information has been developed with support from members of the College of Emergency Medicine and is intended to replace the current discharge advice, which varies widely between departments and is often minimal. Sadly, it is often the case that no discharge information is provided at all.
Approximately 1 million people annually attend A&E departments in the UK with a head injury and around 85% of these injuries are minor. Although patients should be assessed and only discharged home when it is safe to do so, it is still important that they are aware of the signs of complications that require a return to A&E.
The Headway factsheet provides a comprehensive list of these symptoms, as recommended in the NICE and SIGN head injury guidelines, as well as some dos and don'ts to aid recovery.
While most people make a good recovery very quickly, a significant minority experience symptoms that can last weeks, or even months, and information on this is largely absent from current discharge leaflets. The Headway factsheet lists these post-concussion symptoms, including sleep problems, fatigue, headaches, difficulty concentrating, irritability and depression, which can all have a significant effect on quality of life.
You can download the discharge advice from the Factsheets section, or using the link at the bottom of this page.
It is important that people are aware that these problems are common after head injury, but that they should seek professional help if the symptoms persist. The factsheet also details the support services available, such as Headway's national helpline and Groups and Branches.
The importance of unifying discharge advice and providing information on post-concussion symptoms has been shown in published studies, such as those cited below. Also, one of the key requirements of the National Service Framework (NSF) for Long Term Conditions is that patients are given information about their condition at an appropriate time. It is hoped that the factsheet will enable Emergency Departments to meet this requirement and provide much needed reassurance and guidance to people after minor head injury.
It has proved very difficult to distribute the factsheet widely to A&E departments, due to the fact that units already provide their own information and are often contracted to publishers. However, the information is freely available here for anyone to use and if any hospitals would like to adapt the template to include their own logo and contact details they can contact us to arrange this.
It would be useful for any professionals who decide to use the factsheet to let us know so that we can monitor its success. To keep us informed, receive more information or discuss adapting the template please contact Richard Morris, Information Officer at Headway UK.
Useful references:
Kerr, J., Swann, I. & Pentland, B. (2007) A survey of information given to head-injured patients on direct discharge from emergency departments in Scotland, Emergency Medicine Journal, 24: 330 - 332.
Parsley, J., Fletcher, L. & Mabrook, A. (1997) Head injury instructions: a time to unify, Journal of Accident and Emergency Medicine, 14: 238 - 239.