The research suggests that a simple screening question "In a typical week, how many days do you get drunk?" may help identify at-risk students.
"Each year approximately 1,700 college students die from alcohol-related injuries," said Mary Claire O'Brien, M.D., assistant professor of emergency medicine and public health sciences at Wake Forest's School of Medicine, which is part of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. "Our goal was to develop a simple tool to tell which student drinkers are at highest risk of getting hurt, as a result of their own drinking and the drinking of others."
The results, part of an ongoing, five-year research project to develop effective strategies for reducing problem drinking on college campuses, were reported today at the annual meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine in New York City.
Wake Forest researchers found that students who got drunk at least once weekly were three times more likely to be hurt or injured due to their own drinking than student drinkers who do not report getting drunk at least once a week. They were twice as likely to fall from a height and need medical care, and 75 percent more likely to be sexually victimized. Getting drunk was defined as being unsteady, dizzy or sick to your stomach.
"When you drink, you're also at risk because of other people's drinking," O'Brien said.
For example, students who got drunk at least once weekly were three times more likely to be in an automobile accident caused by someone else's drinking and twice as likely to be taken advantage of sexually by someone who was drinking.
O'Brien's goal was to identify a one-question screening tool that could be used in busy hospital emergency depa
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Contact: Karen Richardson
krchrdsn@wfubmc.edu
336-716-4453
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center
23-May-2005