Table 2.

Instructions sent to international drowning experts for the initial round of the drowning dictionary document review.

“Resilience to get something instead of nothing”

Dear [reviewer’s name], when reviewing words, definitions and categorization, please consider the following:

• Be simple, short and easily understandable;

• Include language suitable to high, middle and low-income countries;

• Take into account the need to promote data acquisition from a wide range of individuals: layperson, lifesavers, lifeguards, pre-hospital care, ambulance services, doctors, persons filling out hospital and death statistics, etc.;

• Respect and consider language diversity and the need to have terms and concepts translated to other languages in a manner such that readily definable events will have high internal and external validity (e.g., reproducibility, low sensitivity to recall biases, etc.);

• This dictionary should be developed in a manner in agreement with the ICD-10 revision process and capable of integrating it;

• This dictionary needs to be written in a way so that it can easily and widely be communicated and disseminated, including to organizations that will be end-users namely those involved in water safety issues (e.g., health public and epidemiologist, lifeguard organizations, search and rescue teams, swimming instructors, etc.);

• This dictionary should be developed in such a manner that ensures reproducibility and robustness across a wide variety of reporting sites and sources.

What each reviewer needs to do:

• Review all the terms and definitions established by the CA;

• Before suggesting a new term, confirm it was not already listed;

• Identify any missing word that you think would be useful to be included;

• Identify any duplicates/synonyms or words/items that can be aggregated;

• Indicate unnecessary words/items, if you consider them too generic, not relevant for drowning or because there is already a good consensus for their use in literature;

• From the given term, provide your best definition using the fewest words possible;

• Propose a simple categorization to the dictionary’s terms, if you feel necessary;

• Suggest obsolete terms to be included in a warning list.