Partnership with the University of Otago to deliver trauma patient reported outcomes project

The Health Quality & Safety Commission is undertaking a project to collect and understand New Zealand trauma patients’ self-reported outcomes. The Commission has contracted the University of Otago to deliver this project.

The university team will be led by Professor Sarah Derrett and Associate Professor Emma Wyeth, who both have over 10 years’ experience working on injury-related projects, including with Māori. Their team comprises of trained and experienced interviewers who have completed similar projects such as the Prospective Outcomes of Injury Study (POIS).

The University of Otago was chosen to complete this work for several reasons, including:

• their previous experience with similar projects
• their Māori injury expertise (including their ability to conduct the interviews in te reo Māori)
• their data governance competency
• the fact that doing so means the data will remain within Aotearoa New Zealand
• their experience with working with participants in a way that both protects their privacy but also supports them should the interview process leave them feeling unsettled.

The Otago team will be interviewing willing trauma patients, over the age of 16, who are injured between 1 July 2020 and 30 June 2021 at approximately 6, 12 and 24 months post-injury. The interviews will take place over the phone and can be conducted in te reo Māori if a participant wishes.

The intention is that the Commission and the Network will analyse the data after each tranche of interviews is complete (the complete data set will only be available once the project is complete in late 2023) in order to inform our quality improvement work.

Visit the project page on our website for more information.