Developing a bi-national trauma registry
A unified system to collate information about injuries in Australia and New Zealand is vital to make widespread improvements in the way trauma patients are handled, senior medical experts say.
Currently, improvements based on data collected by numerous separate trauma registries in the neighbouring nations are ad hoc, the experts say in the latest edition of the Medical Journal of Australia. Instead, the group has proposed a bi-national registry for trauma injury in Australia and New Zealand.
"Existing trauma registries in Australia and New Zealand play an important role in monitoring the management of injured patients," says Ms Tamzyn Davey from the Centre of National Research on Disability and Rehabilitation Medicine, at The University of Queensland.
There are currently no Australasian benchmarks for optimal injury management, and monitoring and changes to clinical practices have so far occurred at an individual hospital level or state basis only, in the absence of a unified bi-national approach, says Ms Davey.
Currently in Australia there are state-based trauma registries, and hospital-based registries, but no registries in either of the Territories.
"A bi-national trauma registry is urgently needed to benchmark injury management in order to improve outcomes for injured patients," says Ms Davey
Ms Davey says a bi-national registry would provide a means of monitoring the changing patterns of injury in Australasia and determining the financial costs.
"Such a registry would also make available a large, comprehensive dataset on injury for research and comparison with international injury datasets."
In addition Ms Davey suggests the relationships that would develop between institutions in the common pursuit of improving injury management would facilitate a unified and powerful approach to governments to develop new legislation regarding the prevention and management of injury.
"The capacity to audit and improve injury management is a fundamental component of any trauma system," she says.
"Long-term funding for the development and maintenance of a binational trauma registry is urgently required."
The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association.
The complete original journal article can be accessed at www.mja.com.au.