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An important part of a Level I trauma center is that we work to understand more about traumatic injuries so that we can improve care and develop better ways to prevent them. As part of that, a trauma registry helps set a system for tracking and reviewing outcomes and trends. The information from our trauma registry, such as types of injuries, ages and where they live, tells us where we need to focus our injury prevention programs and education.

The trauma registry provides a secure database to support the patient follow-up, performance improvement, and research. Our system is managed by trauma registrars. Each registrar is certified in what’s called injury scoring and has completed the American Trauma Society’s Trauma Registrar Course.

The Duke Trauma Registry is a database of trauma patient information that documents an episode of a patient’s injury from the onset through hospital discharge. This information:

• develops prevention strategies
• assesses educational outreach needs
• drives performance improvement
• provides administrative feedback
• supports trauma related research

A trauma registry is an extremely valuable tool when the data entered is accurate, complete and current. While maintaining a trauma registry is a requirement of being a credentialed trauma center, the standardized data enables trauma centers to benchmark themselves on a state and national level.