Assessment of the Injury Report System in the Campus-- One University’s Experience

Injury ranks the top cause of death for people age 15 ~ 24 years old. It results in the catastrophic impacts not only to the individual families but also to the whole society. This research explores the reporting system for accidental events in an university in order to analyze the reasons and treatments associated with these accidents. In addition, the operation of this existing reporting system will be examined thus proposing streamlined communication channels for the effective and efficient accident response system on the campus.
A total of 53 accidental events happened during the period of Jan 2004 to Dec 2004. Over half of the cases, 60.4%, are related to traffic injuries; 11.3% to sport injures, and 11.3% to suicides / attempt suicides. Most of the subjects were male and the majority of the events identified were recognized as minor occasions. Further analysis of data suggested that most traffic accidents happened during the school days.
Inspection of the reporting system indicated that the design of the reporting forms was significant to the analysis of responses. For example, open-ended questions tend to confuse operators and the corresponding responses were difficult to summarize for the purpose of future studies. Thus, the current research recommend the university to redesign the accident reporting forms, expand the channels for reporting, and to fortify their education on injury prevention.