Burden or blessing?: Clinical governance in trauma: a trauma director's perspective

The purpose of this paper is to present possible benefits of establishing a national trauma database to assist patient safety and continued clinical excellence in Australia. The paper outlines how the management of trauma patients is organised. It is shown that to continue to engage clinicians, rationalisation of clinical governance structure is required. This will require leadership to improve efficacy and reduce duplication of workloads. It is concluded that, given the right conditions, Australia could commence a national trauma database similar to the American or British systems where minimum data sets are recorded and reap the benefits with improved safety and outcome in trauma patients on a national basis.