Supervisor: Prof. Michael Reade

Co-Supervisors: A/Prof. Jeremy Cohen, Prof. Jeffrey Lipman 

Thesis title:  Observational studies of critical care practice in the management of severe burns patients in Australia and New Zealand   

Thesis Summary: Clinical registries maintain databases for certain prescribed patient populations and facilitate reliable benchmarking of care provided. The collection of reliable, prospective information may be used to improve the understanding of certain conditions and potentially enhance the quality of care delivered. The combination of registry data at a national or international level can generate large data sets which facilitate the reliable study of patient outcomes and allows for institutional comparisons particularly in relatively rare conditions such as burns requiring critical care. There are only 300 severely burned patients admitted to ICU across Australia and New Zealand and therefore the development of a registry capturing data would be valuable. We conducted a gap analysis of current registries available and determined there exists a need to develop a dedicated Critical Care Burn Registry. A Pilot registry will be created using Delphi Methodology and then data will be collected for 12 months. On completion the pilot registry will be evaluated for feasibility and utility.