Patients at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital who have been injured in drink-related assaults will be surveyed to help tackle booze-fuelled crime.

Staff at the hospital in Headington are collecting information from assault victims after the success of trials of the system at other hospitals.

Jonathan Shepherd, a facial surgeon at Cardiff Royal Infirmary, came up with the idea because of the high number of patients brought to the casualty department on Friday and Saturday nights after incidents that were alcohol-related.

He devised a short questionnaire for patients to find out how and where the assault happened, and whether or not alcohol was involved.

The information is analysed before a summary is passed on to crime prevention agencies, including the police.

Information gathered at the JR will be passed to the police, ambulance staff and Nightsafe, the organisation set up two years ago by the Oxford Safer Communities Partnership to tackle violent crime and binge drinking and improve the night-time economy of the city centre.

JR emergency medicine consultant Dr Philip Hormbreysaid: "If a patient has been assaulted, it soon becomes clear if someone has been drinking and they'll then be asked a series of questions about where they last drank, when the assault happened, the location, and what they were assaulted with."

The information - which would be made anonymous - would then be sent out to other agencies, including the police.

Dr Hormbrey added: "We don't want to frighten people away from coming to the accident and emergency department with a problem, and want to reassure them that the information they give will not be personalised.

"Oxford is a city with two big universities, and there's a very lively youth culture. Problems with alcohol do exist, but there's not a bigger problem here than other cities."

Richard Adams, of Oxford's Crime and Disorder Partnership, which funds the Nightsafe initiative, said JR staff would give information to Nightsafe about the location of assaults, so police and other agencies could develop a better profile of incidents in the city centre.

He added: "There are some assaults that are not picked up by the police and the information we get from the hospital helps us to paint a better picture of what is happening in the city centre. Police can bring in extra resources on a certain day, and place staff based on the information they get from hospital staff.

"The assaults are either drink-related or they result from domestic violence, and we are hoping the Government will eventually provide funding for someone to work at the hospital to see if assault victims need further support, particularly those victims of domestic violence."

Dr Hormbrey said: "At this stage, we won't be contacting patients afterwards to advise them that they need further support, because we're not yet convinced of the benefits of this, weighed against cost, although that could happen in future.