This study was conducted to investigate the association between job stress and occupational injury among Korean employees.

The data was obtained from a work-stress survey that was administered to employees of small and medium-sized companies in Incheon, Korea. A four-month prospective follow-up study was conducted (the baseline study was conducted from September 2006 to October 2006, and the follow-up study was done from March 2007 to April 2007). A total of 1,241 participants (774 males and 467 females) were included in the analysis. A structured self-reported questionnaire was used to assess each respondent's sociodemographics, work related factors, job stress, and occupational injury. Job stress was measured using 24 items (7 sub-scales) of the Short Form of the Korean Occupational Stress Scale (KOSS-SF). Occupational injuries were assessed by self-report during the follow-up period. We estimated the relation of job stress to occupational injury using logistic regression analyses.

A total of 199 employees (16.0%) had suffered at least one occupational injury during the previous 4-months. After adjustment for confounding variables, the logistic regression analyses indicated that the groups with high stress as related to 'Job demand' (OR=2.23, 95% CI=1.61-3.08), 'Organizational system' (OR=1.63, 95% CI=1.19-2.23), 'Lack of reward' (OR=1.42, 95% CI=1.03-1.95) and 'Occupational climate' (OR=1.55, 95% CI=1.13-2.13) were more likely to experience occupational injury than the other groups.

Our results tend to suggest that job stress is associated with occupational injury. The importance of job stress should be acknowledged and stress management programs need to be started to minimize the occupational injury caused by job stress.