Objectives To estimate the likelihood of recovery at 1, 4 and 12 months post injury and investigate predictors of recovery in injured people attending an emergency department (ED) or admitted to hospital in the UK.

Methods Participants completed questionnaires at recruitment and 1, 4 and 12 months post injury or until recovered. Data were collected on injury details, sociodemographic characteristics, general health prior to injury and recovery. We compared three age groups: 5–17, 18–64 and 65 years and above. Modified Poisson regression estimated the relative risk of recovery. Multivariable models were built using backward stepwise regression. Sensitivity analyses assessed the effect of missing data.

Results We recruited 1517 participants, 55% (n=836) ED attenders and 44% (n=661) hospital admissions. By 1 month after injury, 28% (285/968) had fully recovered, 54% (440/820) at 4 months and 71% (523/738) at 12 months. Recovery was independently associated with gender, admission status, injury severity, body region injured and place of injury for 5–17 year olds and 18–64 year olds and with gender, admission status, injury severity and long-term illness for those aged 65+. Injury severity and hospital admission were associated with recovery across all age groups, but not at every time point in each age group. Other factors varied between age groups or time points. Results were generally robust to imputing missing data.

Conclusions A range of factors was found to predict recovery among injured people. These could be used to identify those at risk of delayed recovery and to inform the design of interventions to maximise recovery.