A STUDY led by Oxford University has found no signs of a ‘weekend effect’ at NHS trauma centres.

Using data from all 22 major trauma centres (MTCs) in England, a team from Oxford as well as researchers from Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Harvard Universities looked for evidence that outcomes were worse for people admitted on Saturdays or Sundays.

But the team could not find any difference in the proportion of patients that died or made a good recovery based on the day they arrived at MTCs.

Lead researcher Dr David Metcalfe of the Kadoorie Centre for Critical Care Research, based at the John Radcliffe Hospital, said: “Earlier studies raised the possibility that patients have worse outcomes when admitted to NHS hospitals at weekends.

“We wanted to know whether this is true for severely injured patients taken to specialist hospitals.”

Figures were gathered from a national database run by the Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN) that receives data on people admitted for at least three days, or who die after arriving at hospital.

Dr Metcalfe added: “The TARN database is specifically designed to collect outcome data for severely injured patients and so we can be confident that there is no weekend effect in this area. This is clearly good news for patients.”

The JR was designated as a Major Trauma Centre in 2012.