Injuries in The Netherlands: results of surveillance-based public health research

Public health is the scientific field which aims to study, preserve and improve the health of populations. Its primary diagnostic tool is public health surveillance. In this paper the methodology and results are presented of three surveillance-based studies on injury patients in The Netherlands. With the help of national registration data the economic burden of injury was assessed, and both time trends and regional differences in injury mortality were analysed. The results show that the societal burden of injury is high on the one hand, but that there seems large potential for reducing health damage by prevention and improved emergency care on the other. It was also shown that surveillance-based studies may reveal differences in patient outcome by time period or geographic region. In this way they provide valuable information for an assessment of the quality of individual patient care, including the care by emergency clinicians. A basic condition, however, is the availability of valid surveillance data. A central issue is the recording of information on the injury diagnosis, including information on injury severity. This can only be obtained if clinicians are willing to collect data. Public health surveillance therefore highly relies on the co-operation of clinicians.