Accidents account for sizable number of patients coming to emergency department of any bigger city hospital. This results in significant morbidity and mortality and as a result creates economic burden for the victims and their families. These patients are brought to the emergency department for initial stabilization and care and definitive treatment. Our care of accident victims needs improvement at multiple levels and we need to work in collaboration to improve the outcome of these patients.
In the world about 16000 people die from accidents daily and more than 90% of those are from third world. In Pakistan, we have the data from different sources which may not reflect the actual accident victims, still Pakistan Bureau Of Statistics have collected data and it shows that from 2008 to 2018 an average of 4907 – 5948 people died per year from accidents, and the average number of patients got injured was 11037 – 14439 injuries per year. This is why the accidents and trauma is seen as 2nd leading cause of disability, and 5th leading cause of lost healthy years of life.
Looking at the data of accidents in Pakistan it is clear that trauma or accident is the leading cause of young death. The reasons are multiple and include lack of safety in driving practices especially adherence to wearing safety gear while driving motorbike. Another reason is rear wheel of bikes having no cover resulting in entangled dupatta of female passengers and causing accidents. The road safety including condition of the road, signage’s and also the design of the infrastructure is another area that needs to made safe to avoid accidents.
Making sure of the competence of the drivers and adherence to the best and safe practices is another area that can prevent accidents. This requires improved process of awarding driving licenses which ensures the drivers have proper insight about the laws as well as safe driving practices and also have acceptable competence and skills of driving. Similarly at each renewal of driver license it should again be required to show the knowledge and skills of safe driving practices.
Despite all these measures we will not be able to eliminate the accidents and so it is then important to make sure we have proper pre-hospital as well as ambulance services to help those individuals involved in any mishap. The ambulance services running in most of the Pakistan still lacks proper coordination with Hospital as well as the standards of transporting patients from accident sites to the hospital appropriately. The Pakistan Society of Emergency Medicine (PSEM) needs to step in to educate people in accident prevention and also to improve the skills of pre-hospital providers and first responders. We also need to emphasize the role of collaboration when it comes to trauma care and create a safety net as well as information on where the patient can be best treated, when needed. We can actually improve the outcome of the patients.