Significant head injury
Order Description
UK BASED SO MUST USE UK REFERENCES, PROTOCOLS ETC...
Assignment Brief
A 2,500 word academic assignment to meet the following learning outcomes:
1 Critically explore the altered anatomy and altered pathophysiology of a range of body
systems relevant to the critically unwell patient
3 Critically explore the management techniques and pathways in caring for the critically unwell patient, across the lifespan
a) A patient with a significant head injury
Introduction
Set the scene and the parameters of your essay
What are you going to discuss in the essay and why is it important – for example, consequences of
poor prehospital treatment as serious, numbers suffering this traumatic injury are relatively high.
Here you can set the parameters of your essay. For example, you may wish to focus specifically upon a particular type of head injury or you may wish to focus upon the management of raising ICP
irrespective of the cause. Keep the focus narrow and you will be able to provide more depth.
Tell the reader what areas you are going to cover and in what order
Main body
Discuss the condition – probably need to define it first
Talk about the altered physiology appropriate to your condition and why this pathophysiology
occurs. You will need to reference this to a good pathophysiology textbook and possibly some
journal articles. I’m happy to see a relatively small number of references for the same text in this
area unless there is controversy over the physiology. Discuss the areas that are important for part
two of your essay. So, if you plan to talk about TXA (example), you need to address some part of the
clotting process.
Link this to practice – how would the patient present and why? What sort of sensitivity and
specificity is there for the various clinical manifestations? E.g. how many patients with raising ICP
present with Cushing’s Triad?
What management techniques could you use? This may include assessment techniques and
treatment techniques. E.g. critique the GCS as a tool I head injuries, what are the implications of
adding fluid to a patient with rising ICP, how well do the techniques for chest decompression work?
It is this are where the journal literature becomes really important as you will be critically exploring
the techniques you are looking at.
Note: you do not have to discuss every management technique; you could focus on airway
management for a given patient, fluid therapy, use of haemostatic dressings, use of TXA. As long as
you tell me what you are going to focus on
Conclusion
What do your findings lead you to conclude?
References
Full Harvard referencing