Identifying indicators and evaluation steps with suggestions for improving trauma care in Iran: experts’ perspective

Background: trauma is one of the major causes of mortality across the world. trauma patientshave critical status and need timely, adequate, and organized care. the different consequencesof trauma care among service centers around the world and even within a country revealed theneed for careful evaluation. this study was designed and executed to collect experts’ opinions onthe evaluation steps, related indicators, and improvement strategies in trauma care.methods: this qualitative study was based on a conventional content analysis approach. 2 focusgroup discussions (fgd) with 6 participants per fgd and 16 face-to-face in-depth interviewswere conducted to collect the required information (from september 2018 to early 2019).participants were selected through the purposive sampling method. the experts’ viewpoints wereclassified by the main and sub themes.results: four basic themes extracted from the interviews and focus group discussions including,trauma care importance (sub-themes: the involved individuals’ being young and productive andthe 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 before the evaluation, determining evaluationtime scope, determining evaluation dimensions, external and internal evaluation and use ofevaluation results); trauma care improvement (sub-themes: balancing workload in trauma centers,enhancement of information system, considering extra-organizational dimensions in trauma careand empowerment of trauma care providers).conclusions: according to experts’ viewpoints, trauma is a very important issue, because itinvolves young people. they believed that having indicators covering all aspects of care assisthealth managers and policymakers to understand under-standard performance. these indicatorsshould be used in the form of a specific evaluation program and related to iran context. besides,reforming macro policies, planning, development of infrastructures, and education was somerecommendations of experts to improve trauma care.