New pathway could be a life saver
Year 5 Student Doctor, Samuel Harding, was nominated by Dr James Wallace for designing and implementing a thoracic injuries pathway, which has shown a significant reduction in the mortality of older patients.
Samuel received his commendation for a project which he started during his year intercalating in Urgent and Emergency Care BSc at Plymouth University. For the project, he audited and redeveloped a pathway that was in place, to make it more user friendly and include criteria which could include be used to determine the likelihood of a patient developing complications, which then guided their primary imaging.
The project was based around patients presenting with thoracic injuries, mainly rib fractures. Samuel did an audit on patients with known fractures and their primary imaging (ie chest X-ray or CT scan). He found that patients who had a chest X-ray as their primary imaging often had a delay in their diagnosis, as chest x-rays can be poor at picking them up. This delay often led to complications for these patients, such as pneumonia, and some died as a result of this infection.
The repeat audit of the new pathway that Samuel had redeveloped showed that when it was used, the patients had fewer complications and the mortality rate was lower. Samuel told us:
"It was a nice surprise to be nominated for a commendation and was certainly a piece of needed good news at the moment! This project took a lot of hard work and is still in the final stages of being signed off by the trust. Hopefully, this will be in the next few weeks!"
View this month's commendations news story to view the full list of winners for April!
How to nominate
The Commendation Form is for a student to be recognised for activities where they have performed beyond expectations, including clinical skills, research activity, organising activities, helping others, dealing with unexpected events, leadership.
Visit VITAL to download a Commendation Form, they are stored in the ‘Administration folder’ under each year, for example: MBCHB Year 1 Content 2018/19 > Administration > Student commendation form. Completed forms should be sent to: dir.mbchb@liverpool.ac.uk
Certificates are then emailed to the student who is being commended, and you can upload this to your E-portfolio under the prizes section!11 Students who have received a commendation form are also celebrated in The Pulse, the regular School student newsletter.