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• Aspects
• Family
• Child care
• In study and work
• Community
• Health
• Crime and safety
  • Feeling safe
  • Injury
    • Trend: overall
    • Table: cause
    • Table: location
    • Figure: age
    • Figure: transport injuries
  • Death
  • Victims of crime
  • Young offenders
• Economic security
• Demographics
• Age groups
• Essays
• Glossary

What does this mean?

In Kids Stats injury refers to intentional and unintentional physical harm to children and young people.

Injuries range in severity. Some are relatively minor in nature, such as slight abrasions, and others are serious and require hospitalisation, such as a skull fracture.

Why is it important to monitor?

Injuries can affect the quality of life of children and young people [1]. They can cause pain, distress and trauma particularly if they are severe.

Sometimes injuries result in disability or disfigurement or limit children’s development and future well-being.

Injuries can occur in many settings including the home, school, work, sports fields, parks and roads.

Child-friendly environmental design, regulation, adequate supervision and public awareness education all improve the safety of children and young people. For example, child-proof fencing around swimming pools [2].

Indicator

The indicator used in Kids Stats to monitor injury is:

The number of hospital separations of children and young people aged 0-17 years, where injury or poisoning was the principal diagnosis in any given year, as a rate per 1,000 children and young people aged 0-17 years.

A hospital separation is an episode of hospital care from admission to discharge, transfer or change in the type of hospital care.

Main findings

The rate of hospitalisation for injury or poisoning of children and young people in NSW has shown only small fluctuations across the 10 year period (from 17.5 per 1,000 in 1996 to 18.0 per 1,000 in 2005

• Age is a factor. Young people aged 15-17 years have the highest rate of hospitalisation for injury or poisoning, followed by children aged 1-4 years and 10-14 years.
• The most common cause of injury requiring hospitalisation for children and young people is falls, followed by transport injuries and exposure to inanimate mechanical forces.
• In 2005 transport injuries associated with riding a bike were more than twice as frequent as those associated with injuries to passengers and pedestrians.

Notes: [1] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2002). Australia’s Health, 2002. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Cat. No.19, Canberra.
[2] Thompson, D.C. & Rivara, F.P. (2000). Pool fencing for preventing drowning in children. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2), CD001047.