Documenting and evaluating minimum medical datasets in disasters
- Submitting institution
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The University of Manchester
- Unit of assessment
- 25 - Area Studies
- Output identifier
- 185711807
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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-
- Location
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- Brief description of type
- A collection of critical work
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- April
- Year
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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A - SALC
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- One priority challenge of providing healthcare in disaster zones is medical documentation. In this multi-component output, Jafar’s research begins with a literature review demonstrating the absence of medical documentation standards (Jafar et al. 2015). This formed the basis for the World Health Organisation’s approach to address the issue, by developing a minimum data set (MDS) for daily reporting from every international emergency medical team (EMT). Multiple hurdles remained in this endeavor, such as urgent questions around what constitutes minimum data, what standards to use, how practitioners classify injuries, and the constraints on generating documentation in an emergency.
A subsequent study (Jafar et al., 2018), piloted a medical record to determine how, in practice, the MDS functioned. This examined ease of use and rate of capture for key variables. In another study, Jafar (2020a) reported on interviews with practitioners to better understand their experience of disaster medical documentation. This affirmed that competing demands result in the de-prioritisation of documentation: few incentives for documentation exist, despite practitioners’ acknowledgement of its importance. A third study (Jafar et al., 2020b) examined the rates of interrater reliability around potential injuries common in sudden-onset disasters. The study found a moderate degree of interrater agreement, suggesting the need to interpret injury data from EMTs with a degree of caution. Bartolucci, Jafar and colleagues (2019a) also examined the roles of data managers and epidemiologists in EMTs to assess specific data management tasks. Their findings helped guide and delineate specific EMT roles, identifying training requirements prior to deployment. These studies affirm the importance of skills adapted from both qualitative and quantitative research (Jafar 2019b) to better understand the uses, contributions, and challenges of medical data and documentation in disaster contexts, whilst also contributing to demonstrable practical progress (Jafar and Fletcher 2020c).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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