In 2012, work-related injuries causing permanent physical or mental impairment (PPMI) accounted for 12% of all traumatic accidents and musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) accepted by the CNESST.

That same year, injuries causing PPMI accounted for half the accepted days and CNESST disbursements for all traumatic accidents and MSDs. This is not surprising, since such injuries generally have serious consequences and involve quite lengthy absences from work. “Say a construction worker falls and fractures two vertebrae,” explains Marc-Antoine Busque, demographer and co-author of the report Analyzing the risk of injury with permanent physical or mental impairment in Québec. “He could have to change jobs or even quit the construction industry entirely. In a case like that, vocational rehabilitation can take a long time and be very costly.”

Asking the right questions

Who is most at risk of sustaining a PPMI due to a work-related injury? Women, men, younger, older? Is there a link between the frequency of these injuries and certain types of jobs or a certain industry? How has the situation changed over the last decade? These are some of the questions the authors had when they started their research. “We wanted to find out what characteristics had the strongest correlation with risk by studying four variables: age, gender, job type and industry,” Marc-Antoine Busque says. “For our statistical model, industries were organized into nine categories covering the entire economy.”

 Find out more about work-related injuries causing permanent physical or mental impairment and its risk factors.