A new study showed that emergency room personnel have an opportunity to counsel binge drinkers by identifying them among the injured in car crashes, APBnews reported April 11. It's a real problem on college campuses. The study looked at 132 people. Sommers said the study showed that those patients received little or no counseling while at the hospital, even though they were likely to become repeat visitors.
People have patterns of injury.
If you're injured once, you're probably going to get injured again. And that's particularly true with alcohol use. Dr. Susan Nedza, an emergency-room physician in Chicago, Ill., and chair of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said the Ohio study proved that emergency personnel should not assume that binge drinkers would be resistant to taking responsibility for their behavior. We tend to see people with long-term chronic addictions who continue to harm themselves and continue drinking despite the toll it has taken on their lives. We think that because we can't impact that particular group, we can't impact any group.