Home and leisure injuries among the French electricity and gas company active employees: circumstances and short-term consequences.

OBJECTIVE

To characterize home and leisure injuries and their immediate consequences among adults aged 20-60 years and to look for homogeneous profiles of injury circumstances to assess the possibility of setting up prevention programs.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional survey by questionnaire completed on the occasion of a medical visit after a first episode of absence for home or leisure injury between 1 January and 31 December 1997 among Electricité de France Gaz de France (EDF GDF) workforce of three geographical areas (47,681 employees). Incidence and relative risks according to sex, age and work grade and a multidimensional classification of injury circumstances.

RESULTS

Eight hundred and fifty four injuries were studied. Risk was estimated at 18.4 injury victims per 1000 employees, of which 13.4 per 1000 employees were home injury victims and 3.7 leisure injury victims. The risk of all injuries was higher among men than women (RR=1.3) and decreased as work grade rose: for men, it was five times higher among operating employees than managers. Multidimensional analysis of injury circumstances ended by distributing into four main classes which may be useful for prevention: gardening and do-it-yourself injuries outdoors (19.9%), coming and going on the streets (6.9%), falling while coming and going in the home on the stairs (13.4%), and do-it-yourself inside the home (13.0%). Injuries induced essentially four types of lesions: sprains (34%), fractures (31.8%), contusions (24.5%) and wounds. The mean sick-leave lasted 32.1 days but half the subjects returned to work in less than 17 days. Hospitalization was necessary in 19.2% of cases.

CONCLUSIONS

This study completed by an analysis of the behavioural factors of injuries led us to propose programs aimed at changing the risk behaviours related to do-it-yourself, stairs falls and gardening.