Guideline-Based Educational Intervention to Increase Emergency Medicine Providers' Knowledge of Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries

Abstract

There are 2.53 million annual emergency department visits for head injuries. Of these head injuries, 33% will have post-concussive symptoms (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019) (CDC). Research has shown that evidence-based education decreases the risk of developing long-term complications. Still, only 42% of patients diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI) receive education regarding concussion care upon discharge (Seabury et al., 2018). This discrepancy in education has led to this project investigating the clinical question: Do Concussion Knowledge Index scores increase among emergency department providers after evidence-based education about concussions? This project utilized the quality improvement framework model of Plan-Do-Study-Act and the Rosenbaum Concussion Knowledge and Attitudes Survey to implement an educational intervention for emergency department providers. A survey through Qualtrics was used to evaluate pre-test and post-test scores and the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test. A sample size of 28 participants was used throughout this project. The implication of this study was to assess the concussion knowledge of emergency department providers to help develop future educational opportunities that would help lower the risk of post-concussion symptoms among patients diagnosed and discharged with concussion within the emergency department.