Rethinking Head Trauma Care in Older Adults
Date: Thursday 23rd May 2024
Older adults who fall and hit their heads, especially those prescribed anticoagulant medications, can present a clinical challenge to ambulance clinicians. It can be tough to know what is best for the patients when guidelines tell you what to do. In this talk, I will draw evidence from my research and the broader literature to discuss whether chronological age may be a red herring, why older adults need their clinical guidelines, what we know about the risks anticoagulant and antiplatelet medications pose for these patients; and whether we can be more confident in our approach to the unwitnessed faller.
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Jack Barrett, Paramedic Senior Research Fellow, South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS FT
Jack is a Paramedic Senior Research Fellow at South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb) and Air Ambulance Charity Kent, Surrey and Sussex. His primary research interest is in traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the prehospital setting and how emergency medical services can improve the care we provide to these patients, whether they are mild head injuries in older adults or time-critical, severe TBI patients. He has been a paramedic at SECAmb since 2014 and joined the research team in 2017 as a research paramedic. Through the support of the College of Paramedics and the National Institute of Health Research, Jack has developed his research portfolio in TBI and prehospital research. In 2023, he completed an NIHR Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship, which saw him attain his PhD in Health Sciences from the University of Surrey. His thesis aimed to identify older adults presenting to the ambulance service with a head injury that would benefit from being conveyed to the emergency department.