An occupational injury is described as any personal injury, disease or death that results from an occupational accident [1]. Globally, occupational injury has been identified as the leading cause of industrial ailment accounting for over 11% of disability [2–4]. Consistently, estimates suggest that over 350,000 people globally suffer from workplace injuries [5, 6]. Reporting information on occupational injuries is essential to assess the extent to which workers are protected from work-related hazards and risks [7].
Several studies and theories have been employed to explain the factors that influence occupational injuries. Generally, the constrain-response accident model has widely been used in the construction literature [8]. The theory suggests that each individual at the workplace plays a unique role and in the course of executing those roles is constrained by certain factors and their response to these constrain also create an additional set of constrain for other participants who depend on the formal’s actions to act [8, 9]. In particular, occupational injury is seen as a product of the interaction between management, organizational and operational features. This theory is explained according to two main constructs, namely proximal and distal factors [8, 9]. It argued that certain deficiencies in institutional activities could trigger an employee’s action that could lead directly or indirectly to an occurrence of an accident and eventually to an injury [10–17]. Those deficient factors that directly increase an individual’s risk to an accident are known as the proximal factors. These proximal factors do not predict that occupational injury will definitely happen, but rather indicates that a worker may be at risk of occupational injury at some time in the future. [8, 9].
The distal factors, on the other hand, are managerial or organizational constrain experienced by employees and their responses to those constraints. They are those factors that could lead, with inappropriate response/action from employees indirectly to increasing the risk of accident causation as a result of the presence of the proximal factors [18]. The distal variables highlight organizational factors (eg, management, organization and operation) that makes the individual vulnerable for an occupational injury. The distal factors which can increase the risk of occupational injuries are overtime measures, production target, number of working hours, type of work structure, income and task location [8–17]. Conversely, the proximal factors may include immediate individual lifestyle characteristics (eg. alcohol consumption, smoking, adherence to safety regulation, type of work and exposure to hazards) and socio-demographic profile (eg. age, gender, work experience) [13, 19]. More specifically, the distal factors lead to the introduction of proximal factors, whereas the proximal factors lead to the accident causation with injury as one of the final outcomes [11, 14].
In Ghana, occupational injuries have been identified among the leading causes of death. Specifically, 56 out of 902 occupational accidents reported in the year 2000 were from construction-related injuries [20]. This calls for government policies and interventions regarding occupational injuries in the construction industry. Despite this, little is known about the predictive factors that contribute to the burden of occupational injuries among construction workers. The few empirical studies measuring the prevalence and risk factors on injuries are limited to mining [21], domestic setting [3], transportation and manufacturing industries [22, 23], with little or no attention on building construction [17, 24, 25]. To our knowledge, no study has measured factors influencing occupational injuries among construction workers. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to this gap by exploring the prevalence and predisposing factors influencing occupational injuries among frontline construction workers in Ghana.