International Standard to ensure more accurate assessment of severe brain injuries

A senior nursing lecturer from the University of Salford has been part of a team at the forefront of developing a consensus based international standard for healthcare professionals in caring for people with a brain injury.

The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) was first developed in 1974 by two neurosurgeons in Scotland and has become one of the most used tools globally in healthcare practice for assessing a person’s level of consciousness. However, many healthcare practitioners receive no formal training or education in the use of the GCS. This can mean that measurements are not always taken or recorded in the same way.

Dr Mary E. Braine, Senior Lecturer in Nursing at the University of Salford and President of the British Association of Neuroscience Nurses (BANN), has been working with the European Association of Neuroscience Nurses (EANN), the Society of British Neurological Surgeons (SBNS), and Professor Sir Graham Teasdale who developed the tool 50 years ago. They have now developed “The Glasgow Coma Scale: an international standard for education and practice with adults” which has been published in the British Journal of Neurosciences Nursing freely available to download and will be available across the world as a digital download.

Mary said: “This new standard has significant implications for the practice and education of millions of healthcare professionals – nurses, doctors, paramedics and others – who rely on the GCS when caring for people with neurological conditions such as traumatic brain injury. It brings everything together into a format that follows the best available evidence and stays true to the origins of the GCS. It will give professionals the ability to consistently assess a person’s level of consciousness accurately helping to maintain patient safely.”