The PES is offered as a valid and reliable measure of empowerment and disempowerment in hospital settings catering for older people. It enables the identification of environments which place patients at risk of becoming dependent, or alternatively facilitate increasing independence.

Objective To develop and validate a prognostic model for early death in patients with traumatic bleeding.Design Multivariable logistic regression of a large international cohort of trauma patients.Setting 274 hospitals in 40 high, medium, and low income countriesParticipants Prognostic model development: 20 127 trauma patients with, or at risk of, significant bleeding, within 8 hours of injury in the Clinical Randomisation of an Antifibrinolytic in Significant Haemorrhage (CRASH-2) trial. External validation: 14 220 selected trauma patients from the Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN), which included mainly patients from the UK.Outcomes In-hospital death within 4 weeks of injury.Results 3076 (15%) patients died in the CRASH-2 trial and 1765 (12%) in the TARN dataset. Glasgow coma score, age, and systolic blood pressure were the strongest predictors of mortality. Other predictors included in the final model were geographical region (low, middle, or high income country), heart rate, time since injury, and type of injury. Discrimination and calibration were satisfactory, with C statistics above 0.80 in both CRASH-2 and TARN. A simple chart was constructed to readily provide the probability of death at the point of care, and a web based calculator is available for a more detailed risk assessment (http://crash2.lshtm.ac.uk).Conclusions This prognostic model can be used to obtain valid predictions of mortality in patients with traumatic bleeding, assisting in triage and potentially shortening the time to diagnostic and lifesaving procedures (such as imaging, surgery, and tranexamic acid). Age is an important prognostic factor, and this is of particular relevance in high income countries with an aging trauma population.

ObjectivesTo describe the epidemiology of assaults resulting in stab injuries among young people. We hypothesised that there are specific patterns and risk factors for injury in different age groups.DesignEleven-year retrospective cohort study.SettingUrban major trauma centre in the UK.Participants1824 patients under the age of 25 years presenting to hospital after a stab injury resulting from assault.OutcomesIncident timings and locations were obtained from ambulance service records and triangulated with prospectively collected demographic and injury characteristics recorded in our hospital trauma registry. We used geospatial mapping of individual incidents to investigate the relationships between demographic characteristics and incident timing and location.ResultsThe majority of stabbings occurred in males from deprived communities, with a sharp increase in incidence between the ages of 14 and 18 years. With increasing age, injuries occurred progressively later in the day (r2=0.66, p<0.01) and were less frequent within 5 km of home (r2=0.59, p<0.01). Among children (age <16), a significant peak in injuries occurred between 16:00 and 18:00 hours, accounting for 22% (38/172) of injuries in this group compared with 11% (182/1652) of injuries in young adults. In children, stabbings occurred earlier on school days (hours from 08:00: 11.1 vs non-school day 13.7, p<0.01) and a greater proportion were within 5 km of home (90% vs non-school day 74%, p=0.02). Mapping individual incidents demonstrated that the spike in frequency in the late afternoon and early evening was attributable to incidents occurring on school days and close to home.ConclusionsAge, gender and deprivation status are potent influences on the risk of violent injury in young people. Stab injuries occur in characteristic temporal and geographical patterns according to age group, with the immediate after-school period associated with a spike in incident frequency in children. This represents an opportunity for targeted prevention strategies in this population.

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The participation of volunteers in the National Health Service (NHS) has been actively promoted during recent years, particularly within community and primary healthcare services (National Health Service 1996, 1998). As a consequence, volunteers currently make a significant contribution to health and social care within the UK. Concerning this contribution, the literature often portrays the volunteers' role as one of providing social support. In the present paper, the authors attempt to explore this role in more detail, drawing on interview data from studies of two separate volunteer programmes. One of these considered the role of volunteers supporting older hospitalised patients (Davies et al. 2001), and the other was based within general practice (Faulkner 2003, 2004). The social support provided by these programmes is considered from the perspective of four broad support mechanisms described by Langford et al. (1997), namely: emotional support; informational support; appraisal support; and instrumental support. Secondary analysis examines the potential contribution of volunteers to patient well-being.