Second, I work for a regional service in New England that covers a college town and we actually need to perform a study such as this to prove to University administration (who pay a subsidy to support our service) that alcohol is a much bigger problem than their staff epidemiologist is saying. He says 1 in 4 students drink alcohol yet I have data from Halloween last year that had 21 calls in 9 hours and 19 of them were alcohol related. He's using data collected form questionnaires administered by the Health Services Office, my practical data shows something else. Admittedly Halloween may have been aberration but the fact remains that anecdotally our data still does not match with that cited by the epidemiologist even for other, non-holiday shifts.

A study like this can help us prove the extent of the alcohol problem on campus, influence the administration to act on it, and mean that my EMS units are tied up less frequently taking intoxicated students to the ED and are available for other calls. In my mind, improving EMS availability is definitely a worthwhile goal and research that supports that goal may not be as silly as it seems at first glance.

Your milage may vary but from my view this may not be as frivolous as it appears.