On-Duty Nonfatal Injury that Lead to Work Absences among Police Officers and Level of Perceived Stress

Objective: We examined prevalence, frequency, duration, and recency of injury leave and the association of duty-related injury with perceived stress in U.S. police officers. Methods: This cross-sectional study contained 422 active duty police officers from a mid-sized urban police department. For each participating officer, work history records were used to assess on-duty injuries that lead to work absences. Linear regression analyses were used for analyses. Results: Most participants had experienced at least one injury (62%), and among those injured, 67% experienced more than one duty-related injury. The average number of injuries per officer was three (range 1 to 12). There was a significant linear trend in mean perceived stress across injury count even after adjusting for age, rank, and sex (P=0.025). Conclusion: Findings suggest that work-related injury is common and repeated work-related injuries are psychologically distressing in U.S. police officers.