Unintentional Injuries in Scotland: Hospital Admissions: Year ending 31 March 2024 Deaths: Year ending 31 December 2023

This publication summarises information on emergency hospital admissions as a result of unintentional injuries and assaults, sourced from hospital administrative systems (Scottish Morbidity Record, SMR01) across Scotland, up to and including the financial year 2023/24. Deaths are also reported, sourced from death registrations obtained from National Records of Scotland, up to and including calendar year 2023. The figures reported in this publication are based on who died as a result of an unintentional injury or were admitted to hospital in Scotland as an inpatient with the appropriate type of emergency admission code. The term ‘injury’ is preferred to ‘accidents’ as the latter implies that events are inevitable and unavoidable whereas a high proportion of these incidents are now regarded as being preventable. Unintentional injuries can occur in any age group, but children and the elderly are generally more vulnerable. Deaths from substance use disorders, specifically acute intoxication, were classified as ‘mental and behavioural disorders’ prior to 2011. From 2011 onwards these deaths are counted under ‘accidental poisoning’ (where applicable) and therefore included in the figures presented in this publication. Care is required when comparing these statistics before and after 2011. For more information see Appendix 1. Unintentional injuries publications prior to 2013 included information on assaults because injuries occurring this way were considered to be ‘unintentional’ on the part of the victim. To be consistent with the categorisation of these types of injury used by the National Records of Scotland and the International Collaborative Effort (ICE) on injury statistics, we have changed the classification for intentional injuries and data on assaults have been presented separately in unintentional injuries publications since 2013. In the financial year ending 31 March 2024, unintentional injuries accounted for around 1 in 12 emergency hospital admissions in children and 1 in 10 in adults. Another possible outcome of unintentional injury is death. This was the case for approximately 1 in 22 adult and 1 in 27 child deaths during the calendar year ending 31 December 2023.