Pilot Validation of a Standardized In- and Outpatient Data Collection Tool for Burn Injury Surveillance.

Area of Science:

• Clinical Informatics
• Burn Surgery
• Public Health Surveillance

Background:

• Burn registries are vital for understanding burn injuries but current systems primarily capture acute inpatient data.
• Existing registries lack comprehensive data on outpatient and long-term burn treatment outcomes.
• Standardized data collection is needed to improve the scope and utility of burn registries.

Purpose of the Study:

• To validate the Burn Injury Surveillance Tool (BIST), an electronic data collection tool designed for standardized burn data.
• To assess the tool's capability in capturing both inpatient and outpatient burn data, including long-term outcomes.
• To evaluate the inter-rater reliability of the BIST for burn data extraction.

Main Methods:

• The Burn Injury Surveillance Tool (BIST) was developed using data dictionaries from international burn registries.
• The tool was validated by three participants extracting data from 45 retrospective burn cases.
• Inter-rater reliability was assessed using percent agreement and Kappa statistics.

Main Results:

• High percent agreement and strong inter-rater reliability were observed for most variables, especially patient demographics and burn characteristics.
• Discrepancies were noted in subjective measures like injury circumstances and total burn surface area, indicating areas for refinement.
• The validation process provided insights into incorporating outpatient data into burn registries.

Conclusions:

• The Burn Injury Surveillance Tool (BIST) shows promise for standardizing and enhancing burn data collection, including outpatient and long-term data.
• The study offers a methodological framework for validating integrated inpatient and outpatient datasets applicable to other clinical registries.
• Further refinement of the BIST is recommended to address identified discrepancies and improve overall data capture accuracy.