A fantastic year

FEATURE: Hope Hospital Emergency Department

We are at present sixth in the world for recruiting patients into the CRASH Trial. This, however, is hardly surprising if you consider we have Professor David Yates (Lead Clinician for the CRASH Trial) and Sister Gabby Lomas (Lead Nurse) snapping at our heels at the slightest hint of a head injured patient with a reduced GCS.

The incentive to ring the recruitment centre is increased with the prospect of a free mug. Our staff room at Hope Hospital is simply littered with CRASH mugs, so we are pleased to hear that the design of the mug is changing and also that other new incentives are being introduced to entice us further to

randomise Hope's 200th patient.

Several months ago I was the nurse who had the honour of randomising the 100th patient and was rewarded with a box of continental chocolates, which I promptly shared with staff members to avoid 'a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips'.

In November I attended the Annual Royal College of Nursing Emergency Nurses Conference which was held in Daresbury, Warrington, Cheshire. I attended the CRASH breakfast meeting, which allowed me to meet up with other CRASH collaborators to discuss CRASH issues.
Ann Connell, Sister/nurse practitioner,
Hope Hospital Emergency Department

Many congratulations

to Véronique Laloë, Médecins Sans Frontières, Batticaloa Hospital, Sri Lanka, Bogdan Oprita and team in Spitalul Urgenta de Bucuresti, Romania, and Maria de los Angeles Muñoz Sanchéz and team in Hospital Universitario Virgen del Rocio, Spain, for randomising 50 patients into the trial so far.

Congratulations

Caridad Soler Morejón in Centro de Investigaciones Médico-Quirúrgicas (CIMEQ) and Irene Pastrana Roman in Hospital Abel Santamaria Cuadrado, both in Cuba, have now obtained ethics approval and hope to start randomising patients very soon. Also José Luis Mejía González in Hospital General Regional Numero 1, Mexico is now ready to start enrolling patients.