Irish Hip Fracture Database National Report 2020: driving improvement through teamwork

This report has reaffirmed the extraordinary commitment of the multidisciplinary teams involved in hip fracture care in the 16 hospitals involved in this audit. The efforts made by the audit coordinators throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to continue collecting such a high level of data ensured that hip fracture patients remained a priority through a very difficult and challenging period for Ireland’s health service. Providing such high-quality and timely data allowed rapid learning reports to be created in order to help the health service understand and adapt as the pandemic continued. This report shows the importance of clinical audit and standards in ensuring that hip fracture patients receive a high standard of care. The long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic remains to be seen, but thankfully, the IHFD will continue to contribute to the learning and research. Most notable in this report is the progress and development of the orthogeriatric services, advanced nurse practitioner roles and HSCP input since 2018. The data from this audit can be used as a key driver not only for the best standard of care but as a catalyst for applying multidisciplinarity to many other patient groups. It is anticipated that there will be a big focus on research using the IHFD data in 2021 and 2022 in order to fully understand how the audit has contributed to improvements in clinical care, governance and outcomes.