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Summary
Many nurses working in the primary and secondary sectors will care for patients who have sustained fractures. The ability to assess these patients systemically in addition to the injury is important in detecting complications and enhancing bone healing at the various stages of injury or treatment. This article describes different types of fracture and principles for their management. The nursing care of patients who has sustained a fracture is discussed from admission to discharge.
Keywords
Fractures; Nursing care; Rehabilitation; Trauma
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Aims and intended learning outcomes
This article aims to discuss fracture classification and assessment, treatment options, complications and nursing care for the patient who has sustained a fracture as a result of either a minor fall or major trauma. After reading this article, you should be able to:
* Define a fracture and describe some common fracture types based on their shape and mechanism of injury.
* Discuss the signs and symptoms of a fracture and list the injuries and patient groups in which these may be misleading.
* Outline the surgical and conservative treatment for fractures.
* Discuss the nursing care and management of a patient who has sustained a fracture.
* Identify potential immediate and early complications of fractures and describe the signs and symptoms of these.
Introduction
A fracture can be defined as a loss or break in the continuity of a bone (Kunkler 2002, McRae and Esser 2002, Judge 2005). Fractures refer to all bony disruptions, ranging from a small hairline fracture to a bone broken into many fragments. Patients often think that a fracture is more severe than a break, but medically there is no difference between the two terms (McRae and Esser 2002). Fractures are usually caused by trauma (Biswas and Iqbal 1998), which is either substantial as in the case of a fractured pelvis following a road accident, or minor and repeated as seen with fractures of the metatarsal bones of ballerinas or long-distance athletes. Pathological fractures occur as...