This document, the North Carolina Trauma Registry (NCTR) Data Dictionary, was created using the data dictionary published by the National Trauma Registry of the American College of Surgeons (NTRACS), with modifications specific to the North Carolina Trauma Registry. It is to be used in lieu of the NTRACS data.
It provides a brief summary of every data point used in North Carolina, and notes where there are custom options standard throughout the State. It does not cover those data items that are customized or by each site specifically and not used statewide.
Some data points are not downloaded to the State, i.e., the Central Data Collection Agency. These datapoints are noted with a "d" in the Download Scenario column. Therefore, the statewide registry does not include these data points, although each individual hospital has them.
The column labeled Download Scenario contains information on whether datapoints are to be downloaded to the Central Data Collection Agency (the State) and whether datapoints are sent to the National Trauma Data Bank (NTDB). This column contains one of three values:
- d: This variable is not to be downloaded to the State and is not sent to NTDB
- s: This variable is to be downloaded to the State, but the data are not sent to NTDB
- s,n: This variable is to be downloaded to the State, and may be forwarded to the NTDB.
For the NC Custom Data Points, field type and size information have been included in the Definitions column. The field types are character ( C ), numeric ( N ), and date ( D ) and logic (L). Numeric variables can have decimal places. A numeric variable with a size of 4 with no decimal places would be representative as N4.0. A numeric variable with a size of 4 and 2 decimal places would be represented as N4.2.
The column labeled Datapoint History describes the history of changes to each datapoint and/or discussion, issues, or notes regarding the datapoint. Each change or comment is dated. This column was added in the Jan 2001 version of this data dictionary.
