The New Zealand National Trauma Registry: an essential tool for trauma quality improvement.

Purpose: Trauma registries are essential tools for trauma systems and underpin any quality improvement activities. This paper describes the history, function, challenges, and future goals of the New Zealand National Trauma Registry (NZTR).

Methods: Using the available publications and knowledge of the authors, the development, governance, oversight, and usage of the registry is outlined.

Improving patient experience and outcomes following serious injury.

Aim: To explore injured patients' experiences of care to identify areas for improvement in routine service delivery from surgical teams in the transition from inpatient to community-based care.

Methods: Qualitative study drawing on 17 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, conducted from 1 October 2017 to 31 November 2017, with trauma patients (and patient-nominated key support people and health or social care professionals) registered by the Midland Trauma System Registry (New Zealand).

Results: All patient respondents had been under the primary care of surgical sub-specialty teams at Waikato Hospital rather than the specialised trauma service that primarily cares for patients with major multi-system trauma.

Enumerating bacterial cells on bioadhesive coated slides.

Quantifying bacterial abundance and biomass is fundamental to many microbiological studies. Directly counting via epifluorescence microscopy has become the method of choice, especially for environmental samples, and conventional techniques require filtration of cells onto black polycarbonate membrane filters. We investigated the utility of instead capturing stained bacterial suspensions on bioadhesive slides, performing tests using pure cultures of bacteria, mixtures of cultured bacteria, and environmental samples from five habitat types.

Effects of age and composition of field-produced biofilms on oyster larval setting.

Lack of success in restoring the native Eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, to Chesapeake Bay has been linked to the low occurrence of oyster larval setting in tributaries to the Bay. Among the many potential factors that could affect efforts to produce oysters through aquaculture or supplementation of shell beds is substratum condition. The present study examined larval setting on field-produced biofilms from Little Wicomico River (Virginia, USA) to assess whether bacterial community structure (examined by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism, T-RFLP) or other characteristics of contemporary biofilms in this tributary (biofilm age and mass, algal abundance, and percentage organic matter) inhibited setting of larval oysters.