Self-Inflicted Injury-Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program (CHIRPP-SI): a new surveillance tool for detecting self-inflicted injury events in emergency departments.

OBJECTIVES

To assess the performance of the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program's newly developed self-harm surveillance tool (CHIRPP-SI) designed to improve emergency department (ED) hospital surveillance of youth self-inflicted injury (SI).

METHODS

This was a prospective, single-centre cohort study from February 2015 to September 2015. Eligible participants were aged 6-17.99 years and presented to the ED with a primary mental health complaint. The frequency of SI cases was extracted from three data sources (CHIRPP-SI, medical chart, and the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System Metadata (NACRS)). Cohen's kappa statistic was used to examine the level of agreement between data sources.

RESULTS

Of the 250 participants who received a medical chart review, 70 completed the CHIRPP-SI. Of those who did not complete the CHIRPP-SI, 86% (n = 154) reported no SI related to their presentation, 12% (n = 22) declined to participate without specifying self-injury status, and 2% (n = 4) were unable to be interviewed prior to discharge. The three sources of surveillance data varied considerably; the medical chart captured the highest frequency of individuals reporting SI related to their ED visit (33.6%), followed by the CHIRPP-SI (28.0%), and the NACRS database (8.4%). The CHIRPP-SI captured the method of SI and the place of occurrence in 100% of individuals, and the bodily location harmed in 98.6% of individuals.

CONCLUSIONS

Study findings highlight the disparity between different sources of data, in relation to the capture of paediatric SI, presenting to hospital EDs. If greater details of SI events are to be identified, surveillance tools such as the CHIRPP-SI should be considered.