Injuries: home injuries
Two publications are available that use data from the Public Health Scotland Unintentional Injuries publication to highlight the large number of unintentional injuries occurring in the home. These are Home Safe Home, published by Home Safety Scotland, and Bridging the Gap: Injury Surveillance, published by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) in Scotland. A breakdown of accidents by location is also available within the Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) discussed in population surveys.
Key points:
- RoSPA in Scotland estimates that every day around 1,000 people are seeking some form of medical attention following an unintentional injury in the home.
- Young children and the elderly are at greatest risk of unintentional injury in the home: 2,363 admissions per 100,000 population for those aged 75+ years and 548 per 100,000 population for those aged 0-4 years in 2021/22.
- In 2021/22, 38% of all hospital admissions in Scotland due to unintentional injuries occurred in the home.
- Overall, the most common cause of injury in the home was due to falls, a pattern observed in every age group. However, causes of injury were more variable in younger age groups: 42% of unintentional injury hospital admissions among the under 15s were due to falls, compared to 95% for those aged 75+.
- In 2021, there were 1,340 deaths following an injury in the home, for which the majority were due to poisoning. Of those, 47% were aged 25-44 years and 45% were aged 65-74 years.
Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.
