Falls among Swedish nurses and nursing auxiliaries: types of injuries and their relation to age over time

Abstract

The study examines the age-related risk of fall injuries among female nurses and nursing auxiliaries in Sweden. Fall-injury ratios (FRs) were calculated, all injuries aggregated and for four injury types, employing five age categories and four reference years (1980–1995). Although there was a relationship between fall-injury pattern and year of observation, in all years and for all injury patterns, nurses and nursing auxiliaries aged 45–54 and 55–65 years were the only age groups to register FRs substantially higher than 1.0. The findings suggest that patterns in injuries due to falls among these workers might be influenced by certain time-related conditions, but that general preventive priority should be given to workers aged 45 and over.