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Dr. Cary Fletcher, orthopedic surgeon at St. Ann's Bay Regional Hospital
By Kimone Witter
Orthopedic surgeon at St. Ann's Bay Regional Hospital, Dr. Cary Fletcher, says the Accident and Emergency Department is treating more than 1,000 crash victims per year.
This is a breakdown of about 120 victims per month.
Speaking Thursday on the Morning Agenda on Power 106, Dr. Fletcher outlined the multiplier effect that treating crash victims has on hospital resources.
He said elective surgeries are almost non-existent as the procedures are constantly being pushed back.
"What I'm calling elective surgery, meaning like you have cosmetic surgery, like a lump that you don't like how it looks or it hurts a bit, that sort of thing, so you cut and remove it. We can't do that kind of thing because we're constantly now just treating emergency broken bones, emergency infection, which might be a complication of the initial treatment of the broken bones. So you therefore then have people coming to clinic week after week, that cannot get admitted to the wards because the wards are consistently full," he revealed.
The depletion of limited blood supply is also of concern.
"We have a chronic shortage of blood. Just the other day...we have our annual Labour Day blood drive and we have to use initiatives like this to try and boost our complement of blood because we consistently are short of blood. And when one person comes in now with three, four broken bones, this person might require five units of blood, or as lay persons would say, five bags of blood. And when you already started off the day probably with eight bags of blood and the one person has used five, you can see what happens now when you have a bus load of people," he lamented.
Meanwhile, Dr. Fletcher has sought to remind motorcyclists of the need for helmets and appropriate footwear.
He said a review earlier this year of admissions on the Orthopedic Ward showed that 25 per cent were victims of road traffic crashes.
Dr. Fletcher said none of the patients was wearing a helmet and speeding was a factor in all of the incidents. Furthermore, many of them were not properly attired.
"So a lot of the major injuries that we're seeing, the injuries that are requiring need for admission, the injuries requiring need for a surgical intervention, are the lower limb injuries. And when you are in shorts and slippers, your naked skin cannot manage the energy imparted on the limb after the collision," he warned.
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