Objectives: To reveal incidence rates for accidents with bathing services for the aged in Japan.
Design: A postal questionnaire survey.
Participants: Of 444 councils providing bathing services, we sent a postal questionnaire to 102 which had experienced accidents.
Measurements: Timing of the start of provision of bathing services, the total number of bathing services in 2000, and the number of accidents due to bathing services during the last five years in both home-visiting and facility bathing services.
Analyses: In addition we estimated the total number of bathing services per one council for five years to yield the incidence of accidents per 10,000 bathings for the 444. Finally we estimated the total number of accidents due to bathing services in Japan.
Result: Replies were received from 95 (93%) councils. The total number of bathings per council over five years was 4245.0 +/- 4637.7 for home-visits, and 22,235.3 +/- 37,259.4 in facilities. The incidence rates for accidents per 10,000 bathings in 95 councils which experienced accidents were 1.33 and 0.28, respectively. The rates for all 444 councils were 0.204 and 0.067, and the total numbers of accidents due to bathing services were estimated to be 63.1 in home-visits and 149.1 in facilities throughout Japan.
Conclusion: These results indicated that providers' attention should be drawn to the higher incidence of accidents with home-visit than with facility bathing services.