Abstract
A challenge in utilising health sector injury data for Product Safety purposes is that clinically coded data have limited ability to inform regulators about product involvement in injury events, given data entry is bound by a predefined set of codes. Text narratives collected in emergency departments can potentially address this limitation by providing relevant product information with additional accompanying context. This study aims to identify and quantify consumer product involvement in paediatric injuries recorded in emergency department-based injury surveillance data. A total of 7743 paediatric injuries were randomly selected from Queensland Injury Surveillance Unit database and associated text narratives were manually reviewed to determine product involvement in the injury event. A Product Involvement Factor classification system was used to categorise these injury cases. Overall, 44% of all reviewed cases were associated with consumer products, with proximity factor (25%) being identified as the most common involvement of a product in an injury event. Only 6% were established as being directly due to the product. The study highlights the importance of utilising injury data to inform product safety initiatives where text narratives can be used to identify the type and involvement of products in injury cases.
Highlights
Children are more vulnerable to product-related injury and fatality compared to other age groups as they are more likely to use products in ways other than their intended use, due to their lack of understanding and cognitive ability to avoid product hazards [1,2,3]
The findings from the text narrative review indicate that text narrative data plays a significant role in identifying the types of products involved in injury cases, and are necessary for investigating product involvement
Types of products managed under other regulations in Australia and non-manufactured objects were able to be separated from a range of consumer products during the Product Involvement Factor (PIF) categorisation process
Summary
Children are more vulnerable to product-related injury and fatality compared to other age groups as they are more likely to use products in ways other than their intended use, due to their lack of understanding and cognitive ability to avoid product hazards [1,2,3]. Product safety regulators in Australia have increased their concentration on intervention for products which pose hazards to young children, and recognised the need for better use of injury data to monitor product safety issues [5]. Understanding the cause and how a consumer product is involved in the occurrence of an injury is integral to a comprehensive approach to preventing consumer product-related injuries [6]. One of the injury prevention issues that should be taken into account by product safety regulators is human failure, where safety instructions are often overlooked which in turn, leads to product misuse [7]
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