Embodiments of the invention relate to systems and methods for creating a form for receiving data relating to a health care incident. A dictionary of field objects is provided in a metabase, where a field object defines attributes, and an instance of a field object is a form field. A request to create a user-defined field object is received and it is determined that the user-defined field object is not in the dictionary of field objects in the metabase. The user-defined field object is generated by defining attributes for the user-defined field object, where at least one attribute is a presentation attribute for a form field within a form. The user-defined field object is added to the dictionary of field objects in the metabase and the user-defined field object is linked to a data location in a persistent store. The form is generated, where the form is an ordered collection of form fields, where at least one form field is an instance of the user-defined field object and is displayed according to the at least one presentation attribute.