Introduction Worcestershire Acute NHS Trust has an Alcohol Liaison Nurse Service (ALN) based in two Emergency Departments; this provides assessments including screening, brief interventions and referrals into treatment. They function during office hours only. We wanted to evaluate how effective these roles are in reducing the trend in future alcohol related attendances.

Methods Patients were identified by either non-specialist clinicians or the ALN, where alcohol had been a factor in their attendance at A&E, Emergency Decisions Unit (EDU) or Medical Assessment Unit (MAU). They were seen by the ALN who delivered a Brief Intervention (BI).

Their attendances to A+E were compared for the period 12 months before and after the brief intervention to identify whether their attendance patterns varied.

The comparison was carried out by visual audit of patient records on Patient First A+E records system.

Results Since the inception of the ALN service, year on year the figures show a reduced number of re-attendance. Since the inception of the ALN service 1688 patients received a brief intervention, the number of attendances 12 months pre BI were 3814, with 2155 in the 12 months following BI. This shows a reduction of 43%. Based on National Indicators on average, each alcohol related A&E attendance costs £80 (NHS evidence ID:10/0021 2012), this suggests a Trust saving of £132,720.00 over a four year period.

Conclusion These results confirm the efficacy of BI delivered by an ALN service in district general hospital based emergency departments. As a result of these findings other departments within our Trust are developing identification of Alcohol use disorders and Brief Interventions.

Disclosure of Interest None Declared.