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Hospitals are accident hotspots
More than a million people a year are injured in accidents in English hospitals, the National Audit Office estimates. The immediate and long term costs of such accidents are likely to be at least £154m ($231m) a year.The National Audit Office estimated that, on the basis of accidents recorded in 30 NHS acute trusts, there were likely to have been some 450 000 accidents in NHS acute hospital trusts in England during 1995. But because of underreporting of such accidents the true figure is probably considerably higher.
Three quarters of the accidents recorded in the survey affected patients or visitors to trusts, while the remaining quarter affected staff or contractors. For patients four fifths of the accidents were caused by slips, trips, and falls. For staff the main types of accidents were needlestick injuries; injuries caused during manual handling; slips, trips, and falls; and physical assaults by patients.
The inquiry is the first inside hospitals since the lifting in 1988 of Crown Immunity, which exempted hospitals from health and safety legislation.--JACQUI WISE, BMJ
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