Background: Childhood injury is a growing public health problem in developing countries like Bangladesh. Unintentional injuries (UIs) include road traffic injuries (RTIs), falls, burn, cut, drowning, animal injury, machine injury, poisoning and injuries by blunt objects that occur without intent of harm (BHIS, 2016). Information on length of hospital stay periods and magnitudes of social burden of unintentional injuries (UIs) in Bangladeshi children is not adequate.

Objectives: This study aimed to determine average length of suffering periods of children (in days) and also to explore the most influential factors for UIs with socio-demographic characteristics.

Methods: For this study, 822 children of aged <18 years who were hospitalized to the pediatric emergency wards of a government and non-government hospital in Rajshahi City, Bangladesh, were chosen. Convenience sampling was used to choose the injured children as well as their parents. The outcomes included duration of suffering periods for UIs. Bivariate analysis and Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA) were employed for fulfilling the objectives of this study.

Results: The majority of children were suffered to 8-15 days among them due to RTI and injury due to fall comprising 12.30% and 14.80% respectively for their childhood unintentional injury (UI). The result of χ² test statistic has expressed statistically significant association between duration of suffering periods for UIs of children with type of UIs. The MCA analysis results indicated that the grand mean for the length of suffering periods were 5.98 days. Any damage of organs (38.80%) and type of UIs (23.80%) were the strong influential factors for contributing duration of suffering periods. The duration of suffering to hospital stay was significantly longer for children with burn injuries compared with other injuries. The longest length of suffering due to burn injury was 16.97 days. The average duration of sufferings due to RTI and injury due to fall were 5.92 days and 5.68 days respectively.

Conclusion: Unintentional childhood injuries with RTI, injury due to fall and burn injuries were associated with a longer hospital stay for treatment compared with other injuries. To reduce this suffering on families, an effective UIs prevention programme should be developed.