Mass gathering events: retrospective analysis of patient presentations over seven years[1]
Summary
Retrospective analysis of >7,000 first-aid presentations over seven years (63 show days) at the Royal Adelaide Show, where St John Ambulance volunteers have provided care for 90 years — undertaken because workload patterns and determinants had never been formally analyzed. Casualty presentations correlated significantly with crowd size, maximum daily temperature, humidity, and day of the week; determinants of the presentation rate were heterogeneous. Minor medical problems were the most frequent presentation; Wednesdays attracted higher presentations and more major medical categories. Concludes that individual event analysis provides an evidence base for resource allocation and supports building accurate prediction models.
So what
The founding dataset of the Adelaide prediction lineage: this seven-year Royal Adelaide Show series is the raw material behind the Zeitz forecasting method later validated against Arbon's model (zeitz-2005-forecasting), and its finding that same-event history beats generic factors is the core argument for events keeping their own medical records. The weekday effect (Wednesdays worse, and more acute) is a scheduling-level planning insight most PPR models still ignore.
Key findings
- 7,000+ presentations, 63 show days, 7 years at one recurring event
- Presentations correlated with crowd size, max temperature, humidity, day of week
- Wednesday effect: more presentations AND more major medical categories
- Event-specific historical analysis proposed as the basis for prediction models
Read the paper
- Publisher (DOI) ↗may be paywalled
- PubMed ↗abstract · free