Unintentional injuries
Hospital admissions year ending 31 March 2023 and deaths year ending 31 December 2022
A National Statistics publication for Scotland
- Published
- 10 October 2023 (Latest release)
- Type
- Statistical report
- Author
- Public Health Scotland
About this release
This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) reports on emergency hospital admissions and deaths as a result of unintentional injury.
Main points
- In 2022/23, there were just over 54,700 emergency admissions for unintentional injuries. This represents 1 in 10 of all emergency admissions in Scotland. In 2022, unintentional injuries led to 2,677 deaths.
- Admission rates for road traffic accidents in the under 15 age group has been decreasing steadily over the past 10 years from 40.2 in 2013/14 to 22.5 in 2022/23.
- There remains a significant gap in the standardised mortality ratios between the most deprived and least deprived areas in Scotland. Death rates due to unintentional injuries in adults were 94% higher in the most deprived areas but 48.5% lower in the least deprived areas when compared to the Scottish average.
- Falls were by far the most common cause of emergency admissions for unintentional injuries in children, for both males and females, accounting for (42.8%) of the 5,601 emergency admissions in 2022/23.
- In 2022/23 there were 27,637 emergency admissions to hospital for an unintentional injury in those aged 65 and over, with 87.2% of these being the result of a fall.
Background
Unintentional injuries can occur in any age group, but children and the elderly are more vulnerable. The term ‘unintentional injury’ is used rather than ‘accidents’ as ‘accident’ implies that events are unavoidable when actually a high proportion of these incidents are preventable.
The information comes from hospital administrative systems across Scotland, up to and including the financial year 2022/23 and from death registrations sourced from National Records of Scotland, up to and including calendar year 2022.
Further information
The next release of this publication will be October 2024.
General enquiries
If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please contact John Connor at phs.benchmarkingproject@phs.scot.
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Older versions of this publication
Versions of this publication released before 16 March 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence, Health Protection Scotland or Improving Health websites.