Ambulance staff: 100 injuries a month!

Over the last three years (from January 2008 to October 2011), there were over 5,000 injuries to London Ambulance Service workers. That’s an average of over 100 a month.

This is all according to data released under a Freedom of Information request by Nick Stylianou.

The largest number of reported injuries was in December 2010, with 160. The late summer months appear to have the lowest number of reported injuries, with June 2009 having only 77 incidents.

More than 26,000 days have been taken off work due to these injuries – over 71 years’ worth of time off! On average, for every month worked over the reported period, a month and a half is taken off as a result of injury.

A total of 503 days have been lost due to injuries involving assault on workers.  That’s over a year of time off work because of attacks to ambulance staff.  Over half of those days are categorised as ‘miscellaneous assault‘ with a third involving injuries to the arms, wrists and hands.

General injuries while on duty are unsurprisingly dominated by back problems – most likely down to lifting heavy patients or equipment through awkwardly-sized spaces. The popular Health & Safety briefing to ‘lift with your legs’ might be to blame for the 15% of days off due to assorted leg injuries.

To see these stats broken down by ambulance station, and to see how many ambulance workers were injured near you, click here.

Discuss - One Comment

  1. Quick point: avoid 3D visualisation – it’s harder for people to work out visually than 2D. Great work on the FOI – I think there are stronger angles than the one you’ve headline with though…

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