Presentations at national meetings provide an important forum to relay research findings in all areas of Orthopaedic surgery. Orthopaedic surgical trainees are encouraged throughout the training process to participate, present and ultimately publish their research. Indeed the well known mantra ‘Publish or Perish’ signifies the pressure trainees are sometimes placed under in order to achieve professional success. The number of original published papers is often the yardstick by which professional appointments are made. We aimed to determine the overall publication rates of presentations from the 2001 and 2002 Irish Orthopaedic Association meetings and to determine whether publication rates differed among other national Orthopaedic meetings and amongst the subspecialties. A comprehensive literature review was conducted using the proceedings of the 2002 & 2003 IOA meetings using Pubmed and Medline. Time to publication, orthopaedic subspecialty and journal was analysed. Rates were compared to other similar studies documenting rates of publication in the AAOS and data compared using Pearsons chi square test.Background
Methods
Meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are endemic in hospitals throughout Ireland and present a major concern in hospital hygiene causing significant morbidity, mortality and imposing a significant financial burden. This is particularly true in the field of orthopaedic surgery where a nosocomial MRSA infection can prove catastrophic to a patient's recovery from surgery. Much has been made of the possibility of healthcare workers acting as vectors for the transmission of MRSA and other pathogenic bacteria in the hospital setting. This focus has led to the implementation of strict hand decontamination policies in hospitals in order to counter the possibility of staff - patient transmission of such bacteria. Investigations have also attempted to assess the bacterial contamination of work uniforms such as white coats, ties and scrubs. An area that has been generally overlooked however, is the assessment of the bacterial contamination some of the most commonly handled items of many healthcare workers, namely pagers and mobile phones. In this study we aimed to assess the potential for these items to act as reservoirs for MRSA contamination and thus propagate its transmission in the hospital setting. Our study was performed at Cappagh National Orthopaedic Hospital, Dublin. We swabbed and cultured a sample of the pagers and mobile phones of staff. Questionnaires to assess the demographics of the staff sampled as well as the routine cleaning habits for their phone/pagers were also administered.Background
Methods
