Evaluation of a system for injury surveillance in Swedish emergency care

A system for continuous and periodic injury surveillance in Swedish emergency care has been evaluated based on a case study of accidental injuries on 2,454 farms during a one year period. The evaluation procedure comprised registry completeness, measurement errors, trend analysis and calculation of risk. The results indicate that the structure of the registry system permits analysis of registry completeness, but further development is needed concerning the staffing and organising problem. The importance of registry inclusion criteria when one is comparing different injury surveillance systems was noted. Limitations applied to calculation of accident frequency rates per million hours work. The results show that there will be a high drop-out rate if the collection of data is not simultaneously combined with an injury control programme. The registry system could serve as a basis for periodic surveys and trend analysis. Further development of a continuous system based on reporting immediately at the injury reception centre should be considered. A coordinated system involving both continuous and periodic data seems to leave the flexibility both to identify certain risk environments or risk groups and to analyse the circumstances involved of specific accidental injuries, e.g. in agriculture.