Work Package 1

The National Ambulance Service (NAS) electronic Patient Care Record (ePCR) records what happens to patients before they reach hospital. The Major Trauma Audit (MTA) captures data on patients’ hospital treatment.

In the first work package of the study, we will combine, anonymise and then analyse these datasets.

This will inform important decisions on which hospitals to take patients to ensure patients are brought quickly to the most appropriate hospital to manage their injuries.

Aims

Inform nationally-important policy and practice for trauma care by combining, anonymising and then analysing the National Ambulance Service (NAS) electronic Patient Care Record (ePCR), and the Major Trauma Audit (MTA).

Objectives

(1) Combine MTA and ePCR datasets. The datasets will be pseudonymised. This means any information that could be used to identify an individual will be replaced with a value that does not allow the individual to be directly identified.

(2) Anonymise the combined dataset. This means it will not be possible to identify any individual in the dataset.

(3) Analyse the anonymised dataset to explore major trauma incidents in Ireland that can inform pre-hospital service configuration and safe patient management.

(4) Analyse the anonymised dataset to develop a national clinical prediction rule for major trauma in Ireland. This will identify characteristics determining the need to bring patients to a larger major trauma centre or trauma unit.

Data to be processed

The study concerns trauma patient data for the years 2020-2022. This will include demographic information (such as age and sex), incident details (fall/vehicle accident etc.) and clinical observations (blood pressure etc.). The data will not include any patient names.

Steps to exercise data protections rights

The steps to exercise your data protection rights are included here