The Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset (VEMD) contains information detailing presentations at Victorian public hospitals with designated Emergency Departments. For the purposes of this report, patients presenting for family violence reasons are identified by the ‘human intent’ data item.

At the Emergency Department, the clinician assesses the most likely human intent. Patients presenting for family violence reasons are those that presented with a human intent injury of 'Maltreatment, assault by domestic partner' or 'Child neglect/maltreatment by parent or guardian'. The VEMD information published under the Family Violence Database (FVDB) focuses on the demographic characteristics as well as the nature and cause of their injuries of the patients presenting for family violence reasons. The FVDB only reports on family violence (FV) related patients (as indicated by the human intent data item). Therefore, when there is a reference in the FVDB to 'patients', this only includes family violence related patients presenting to a public hospital in Victoria.

The counting unit for the VEMD is the patient presenting at a Victorian public hospital. In the dataset there is one record per patient. However, persons can present multiple times at the emergency department and thus have multiple records in the VEMD.