Feasibility of collecting accident data from the NHS
A research report on the evaluation of data from a pilot study into the feasibility of collecting accident data from the NHS relating to consumer products.
Documents
Details
In 2018, the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) commissioned the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) to conduct a pilot study collecting anonymised accident and emergency data relating to consumer products from a small number of hospital sites.
This report covers the findings of our analysis of the resulting dataset, which contains much information about injuries, but was not designed to gather information about products. This limitation would be difficult to overcome without changes to the method of data collection.
We found it hard to determine whether products were the cause of the injuries. Our analysis suggested that less than 10 per cent of the data involved injuries linked to potentially unsafe products.
While the dataset has provided interesting insights, it is not suitable for addressing evidence gaps around product-related injuries. There remains a need for product-related injury data to support the regulatory work of OPSS.