Injury in Australia

There are many ways that the severity, or seriousness, of an injury can be measured. Some of the ways to measure the severity of hospitalised injuries are:

• number of days in hospital (length of stay)
• time in an intensive care unit (ICU)
• time on a ventilator
• in-hospital deaths.

Average length of hospital stay

The most severe injuries in 2024–25 as measured by average length of stay in hospital were due to thermal causes (4.9 days), falls (4.8 days) and transport (3.4 days) (Figure 12).

Figure 12: Average length of stay (days) by injury cause and sex, 2024–25

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database

For the most severe injury types, average hospital stays were 6.0 days for internal organ injuries, 5.6 days for intracranial injuries, and 5.0 days for burns.

The longest average length of stay for males was for intracranial injuries (6.0 days), and for females was for internal organ injuries (6.6 days) (Figure 13).

Figure 13: Average length of hospital stay (days) by injury type and sex, 2024–25

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

ICU, CVS and in-hospital deaths

In 2024–25:

More males were admitted to ICU than females (54.8 and 32.3 per 100,000 population, respectively) (Table 3). 

Although more females are hospitalised for falls (Figure 18) males have a higher ICU admission rate for falls (15.9 and 10.4 per 100,000, respectively), suggesting that fall-related injuries may be more severe in males.

For transport-related injuries, males were 3.1 times more likely to be admitted to ICU compared with women (13.8 and 4.5 per 100,000, respectively). More females were admitted to the ICU for intentional self-harm compared with males (10.6 and 9.3 per 100,000, respectively).

Note: Rows with under 20 persons are not displayed

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database

Males were around twice as likely to require CVS compared with women (32.5 and 16.5 per 100,000 population, respectively) (Table 4). Injuries due to intentional self-harm (7.7 per 100,000), transport (5.3 per 100,000) and falls (4.1 per 100,000) were most likely to result in continuous ventilatory support.

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Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database

Injuries caused by falls were the leading cause of deaths in hospital (9.6 per 100,000 population), followed by transport and intentional self-harm. Males were more likely to die in the hospital than females (14.1 and 10.1 per 100,000, respectively) (Table 5).

Note: Rows with under 20 persons are not displayed

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database