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Conflicts of interest: none
Introduction
In Belgium, a wide variety of public events are being organized every day, ranging from a country village fair with a few dozen guests to mass gatherings such as music festivals where more than 80,000 people are gathered daily over four days. The majority of these events have first aid (FA) posts, where FA services mainly are provided by the Belgian Red Cross-Flanders (BRCF; Flanders, Belgium). For example, in 2013, trained volunteers of the BRCF were stand-by at 9,743 different events (football matches, festivals, and hiking and cycling events) and provided FA services to more than 64,000 people. In order to improve the quality of the medical on-site services and to assist in the planning of the management of health problems, such as on-site treatment capacity for minor conditions (patient presentation rate [PPR]) and emergency medical response capacity (medical providers, ambulances, and hospitals) when more advanced services are required, more systematic data collection and biomedical reporting is essential. The Medical Triage and Registration Informatics System (MedTRIS) database described in this report can help to address this and can contribute to building a body of evidence on large events/mass-gathering medical care ("large events" traditionally are defined as those with a number of attendees greater than 1,000, though it is also defined as an event in which crowds gather and there is a potential for delayed response to emergencies, thereby requiring preparation to improve health care).
Methods
Data Collection
The BRCF has systematically registered information on all patients treated in FA posts at public events for the last 20 years. The first registration was performed during the so called "Dodentocht" (a 100-kilometer annual hiking event) in 1994.
However, the information at that time was not gathered in a uniform and standardized way and, as a consequence, data from different events were difficult to compare. Therefore, in 2003, a working group was formed with the aim to standardize the registration procedure. The working group has analyzed not only the different ways information was collected and registered, but also has performed a literature survey to collect useful information and evidence on related practices world-wide.
As a result, the registration of patients by BRCF during mass gatherings was standardized as of 2006.
Standardized...