Influence of the Time of Day on Triage-to-Nerve Block Duration in Acute Hip Fracture Patients

To determine whether the time of day a patient presents to the emergency department with a hip fracture affects the speed at which a nerve block is administered for analgesia. This study hypothesizes that patients presenting outside of regular hours (night shift) may experience longer delays in receiving nerve block for analgesia.

This is a single-site, retrospective, comparative, observational study of all patients triaged at an emergency department and diagnosed with a hip fracture in the 2023 calendar year. The study compared the time taken from triage to when the patient received a nerve block for analgesia between day and night shifts. The median time taken was compared using the Mann-Whitney U test.

The results of 56 patients (30 day shift and 26 night shift) were compared. The median time to nerve block was four hours and 46 minutes for the day shift and five hours and 51 minutes for the night shift. This difference of one hour and five minutes did not meet statistical significance (p = 0.0556).

The Mann-Whitney U test indicated that the difference in time to administer a nerve block between the day and night shifts is not statistically significant at the 0.05 significance level.