The concept of a predetermined first patient on the following days trauma list (the golden patient) was introduced to our hospital in April 2009. The golden patient (GP) should already have been seen by an anaesthetist and be ready to be sent for by theatres early. The aim was to improve theatre start times following disappointing results from a previous in-hospital study. It has been shown by others to improve operation start times and could be used to improve trauma services and meet clinical targets more readily. This prospective study involved the collection of planned trauma lists with the designated GP over November and December 2009. Data was collected from theatre logbooks and included patient demographics, theatre arrival, anaesthetic and operation start times. This was compared with the pre-GP data (January and February 2009). A two sample T-test was used to evaluate statistical significance between groups.Introduction
Methods
