Working hours and the risk of injuries – study protocol

Abstract

Introduction: This protocol describes the study design of a research project on how working hours affect the risk of accidental injuries.

Method: The research project will investigate how working hours during the past week affects the risk of all accidental injuries (during work, commuting and leisure time), with a main focus on timing of working hours. The population will consist of public sector employees in the Danish working hour database (DWHD) from 2008–2015, primarily employed in hospitals. Payroll data from the DWHD will be linked to accidental injuries recorded in the National Patient Register and The Danish Register of Causes of Death. The effect of timing of working hours will be studied in a multistate model with Poisson regression analyses.

Discussion: A protocol helps in the planning of a research project and reduces the risk of data driven findings. This protocol describes the research questions, data, definitions and serves as a starting point for testing and applying the method in a subset of the data. The developed model will then be used to test the research questions in another subset of the cohort.