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

Burn registries are critical in understanding, managing, and addressing the complexities of burn injuries and care by providing comprehensive data on injury patterns, treatment modalities, and outcomes. Current registries focus on the acute phase of inpatient burn care and lack data on outpatient and long-term treatment outcomes. This study aimed to validate the Burn Injury Surveillance Tool (BIST), a pilot electronic data collection tool designed to standardize burn data collection that includes both inpatient and outpatient data. Developed based on data dictionaries from established international registries, the tool includes 6 key sections capturing patient information, injury etiology, injury severity, acute treatment, quality-of-care indicators, and long-term outcomes. Validation involved 2 non-burn-specialized participants and 1 burn-specialized participant using the tool to extract data from 45 retrospective burn cases at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada. Inter-rater reliability was assessed through percent agreement and kappa statistics. Our results indicate high percent agreement and strong inter-rater reliability for most variables, particularly patient demographics and burn characteristics. Challenges included discrepancies in subjective measures such as injury circumstances and specific total burn surface area values, which highlighted areas for tool refinement. The creation and validation of the BIST provided valuable insights into how to incorporate outpatient data into new and existing burn registries. Beyond its immediate findings, this study offers a methodological framework for validating integrated in- and outpatient datasets that can be adapted for other clinical registries, supporting more complete and interoperable burn registry designs.