Nuffield Trust publishes Emergency General Surgery report commissioned by RCS
11 Apr 2016
The Nuffield Trust has today published a report entitled Emergency General Surgery: Challenges and Opportunities which has been commissioned by the Royal College of Surgeons. The front page of The Times and page 2 of The Sun have covered the story.
John Abercrombie, general surgeon and spokesperson for the Royal College of Surgeons said:
‘Patients who face life-threatening injuries and major trauma are generally treated well by the NHS. However, the standard of care of other emergency and critically-ill patients needing urgent treatment is highly variable across hospitals and has fallen behind other Western countries. This includes patients who have gallstone disease, need their appendix removed, or who are suffering from a bowel or hernia obstruction. Many of these are older patients.
‘Over the last few decades the NHS has rightly spent a lot of energy and resource improving planned care for patients. Today’s important report from the Nuffield Trust demonstrates we now need the same determination and priority given to improving the care of some of the sickest patients in the NHS.
‘The Royal College of Surgeons and others are pursuing a number of initiatives to improve emergency general surgery including the collection and publication of data, working with hospitals to improve patient pathways, and proposals to improve training. We urge the Government and local hospitals to help support us to make this area a higher priority for the NHS.’
Notes to editors
The Royal College of Surgeons of England is a professional membership organisation and registered charity, which exists to advance surgical standards and improve patient care.
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