Occupational injury patterns in a hospital-based cross-sectional study in Türkiye: sectoral characteristics, injury profiles, and determinants of multiple injuries (2019-2023).

Abstract

Background: Occupational accidents remain a major public health and economic burden, particularly in middle-income countries. While healthcare workers and high-energy industrial sectors are often examined separately, hospital-based injury data derived from forensic medical records provide a structured opportunity to compare sector-specific injury patterns within a unified analytical framework.

Methods: This retrospective hospital-based cross-sectional study included all occupational injury cases presenting to a tertiary emergency department and systematically documented through forensic medical records between 2019 and 2023 (n = 402). Sociodemographic characteristics, sector, accident mechanism, injury location, and injury count were analysed. Associations were assessed using chi square tests and Cramérs V. Independent predictors of multiple injuries were examined using binary logistic regression, and sector- and mechanism-specific within-sample relative risks were calculated.

Results: The study population was predominantly male (66.9%) and young (45.5% aged 18-29 years). Construction, healthcare, and logistics were the most represented sectors. Physical trauma accounted for 95.3% of cases, while infectious exposure risk was identified in 21.4%, mainly from needlestick injuries and body-fluid splashes in healthcare. Multiple injuries occurred in 35.8% of cases and were disproportionately concentrated in high-energy sectors, including electrical-mechanical work (OR = 44.43; 95% CI = 3.72-531.12), manufacturing (OR = 12.82; 95% CI = 2.91-56.50), construction (OR = 4.64; 95% CI = 1.58-13.62), and logistics. Traffic incidents and falls were the strongest contributors to multi-region trauma. Upper-extremity injuries, particularly hand and finger trauma, predominated in healthcare workers, mainly nurses and healthcare technicians, and were more frequent among females.

Conclusions: Among workers presenting to a single tertiary hospital, injury patterns differed by sector, with infectious exposure predominating in healthcare and high-energy mechanisms in industrial sectors. These within-sample patterns identify potential targets for sector-specific prevention; however, without workforce denominators, they do not establish which sectors or age groups carry the highest injury risk, and broader prioritization requires population-level evidence.