How is data collected?
Trained Data Registration Officers (DROs) visit hospitals across Ireland and review the hospital records of anyone who attended, or presented to, the Emergency Departments.
The reason for this is to count and monitor, self-harm presentations to Emergency Departments each year.
When a DRO comes across a case of self-harm among the hospital records, further relevant information is collected from those patients’ hospital records.
What data are collected?
The data that is collected includes the type of self-harm, how patients arrived at the hospital, date and time of arrival and type of treatment. This type of information is collected to monitor when self-harm presentations to Emergency Departments happen and what type of self-harm is involved.
The patient’s name, date of birth and address are also collected but they are not stored by the Registry as they are identifiable information.
The patient’s name, date of birth and address are only used by the DRO to create a unique code for the patient, and to identify the general area in which they live. This is to ensure that the same person is not counted twice, and to count and monitor cases of self-harm based on the county the person lives in.
Once the DRO has collected the relevant data from the hospital records, they submit a file electronically to the Registry. Patient identifiers (name, date of birth, address) are not submitted, just the unique code that was created for them.
Is my data in the Registry?
If you have attended a hospital Emergency Department with injuries related to self-harm, your data may have been collected and recorded by the Registry.
If it is noted that a patient did not wish for their data to be extracted from their hospital record, then the patient’s wish will be respected, and their data will not be recorded in the Registry.
Data protection rights
Anyone is entitled to contact the Registry to enquire if their data has been recorded. It is necessary for individuals to provide us with sufficient details to allow us to identify their data record with certainty. A form is available below to facilitate this, or the Registry team can be contacted by email at infonsrf@ucc.ie.
If someone’s data has been recorded, they have the right to request their data and to withdraw their data from the Registry.
If someone requests their data, their data will be provided by a member of the Registry team.
If someone requests to have their data withdrawn, their data record will be removed from the Registry masterfiles. Any data recorded or submitted by the Data Registration Officers will be electronically and/ or physically shredded. Confirmation of this will be sent to the person who made the request.
Contact us form
Related links
