Evaluation of Performance in Trauma Care: experts’ viewpoints

Background: Trauma is one of the leading causes of mortality across the world. Trauma patients had critical status and need timely, adequate and organized care. The different consequences of trauma care among service centers around the world and even within a country reveal the need for care assessment. This study was designed and executed to collect experts’ opinion on the evaluation of trauma care in Iran. Methods: This qualitative study with conventional content analysis approach, two focus group discussions with 12 participants and 16 face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted to collect the required data. Participants were selected through purposive sampling method. The experts’ viewpoints were classified in accordance with the main and sub themes. Results: Four basic themes extracted from the interviews and focus group discussion including, trauma care importance (sub-themes: the involved Individuals’ being young and productive and the effectiveness of trauma care); trauma care indicators (sub-themes: pre-hospital indicators, in-hospital indicators and post-hospital indicators); stages of trauma care evaluation (sub-themes: evaluation prerequisites, finalization of indicators prior to evaluation, determining evaluation time scope, determining evaluation dimensions, monitoring and evaluation and use of evaluation results); trauma care promotion (sub-themes: balancing workload in trauma centers, enhancement of information system, considering extra-organizational dimensions in trauma care and empowerment of trauma care providers). Conclusion: Performance evaluation through acceptable indicators is basis of health care improvement. In addition to the evaluation, reforming macro policies, development of infrastructures, enhancement of information system and training care providers should be taken into account too. Keywords: Performance indicators, Evaluation, Hospital, Trauma care