Posted By Helen Flinn Hi All We are having a big push this year to encourage A&I reporting as I'm convinced I don't hear the half of what goes on out of the office. I am in the process of revamping our A&I forms as they are very dated and hard to follow, plus we seem to have multitudes of different forms which often confuses people. I would ideally like to amalgamate them all into one handy form which is easy to follow and encorporates all eventualities (accidents, incidents, dangerous occurences, near misses, sharps, violence etc. I've done my best to incorporate all the necessary details that RIDDOR might need should it be reportable, plus a decent investigation section, but I'm wondering if there is anything else that I might need to include? I've got such things as: Name Address Job title DoB Date and Time What happened Where it happened Contributory factors Nature of injury & area injured Treatment Did work stop & for how long How long absent Reportable PPE worn Witnesses How reported Near miss - possible outcome Preventative measures against reoccurrence Action required Any comments (or examples) gratefully received Hx

Posted By Tabs Manager's name, manager's comments? Employer name & address if visitor?

Posted By JasonGould I have a quick question on this matter. When a company implements a incident form, where do they stand regarding the accident book. Should there still be a accident book or could the in house form satisfy those DPA requirements? What are the pitfalls of these forms Thanks in advance Jason

Posted By Gff sorry actually read you post this time jason DPA has not to do with the form itself but the way the information on it is managed/filed etc. The pit falls are best discussed with your insurance company. There are more pitfalls to be had by asking for too much information

Posted By Gff Thats a good point but if you have done your homework you won't need approval Any questions regarding suitability would soon be discredited by expert witness should one be deemed necessary in court. However having it pre approved will save any hassel in the long run

Posted By J Knight No, we don't need approval, but believe me it takes practically zero effort (one short phonecall to the DWP and a brief email) for a strong assurance of due diligence, John

Posted By I R Langston I am a little worried about this, have you considered looking at the IOSH accident Investigation Course. Relevant forms and the legal aspects surrounding their use are covered there. Please contact me or IOSH PD dept. if you require details

Posted By Chris Jerman Helen, my suggestion is that amalgamation is the way to go. Let's stop distinguishing between accident, incident, near whatsit etc. The problem with traditional reporting and investigation is that it only sees part of the picture. Example. Someone cuts themselves with a knife. We all go nuts trying to ban knives to stop this happening again. The same morning whilst opening a roller shutter door, a piece of the mechanism falls off and nearly hits someone. As there is no injury, generally no-one gets that involved. Managers even admit that he was lucky "It could have killed him!". You see, what we actually do and have been doing for years is INJURY investigation. Ask people how good their accident reporting is, then ask them how good their near miss reporting is and you'll see that accident means injury and near miss means event. We need to shift focus to EVENT reporting and investigation. How do I do this? I do use the same reporting forms etc but try to get away from the 1st Aid side of things, that's a separate and existing mechanism. Once you've removed the injury bit you can get on with looking at the incident (the all encompassing term) To filter out the less important I use the concept of the reasonably foreseeable worst case injury. I'm not interested in what injury WAS suffered, I'm interested in what MIGHT have been suffered. This way the door event would have over-ruled the cut event. I set management sign off at three levels to correspond with the potential injury levels set by the risk matrix low, med and high. An incident with a high rfwci (doesn't matter if there was injury or not) must be signed off at the highest level. Look. If you were a Director and there was a major injury and someone said "It was only a matter of time before that happened" wouldn't you want to know why no-one had ever told you. "Well, this was the 1st time that anyone actually got hurt - but we'd had several near misses" So risk assessment and incident investigation should use the same language. Risk assessment - what are people doing, what could go wrong, what could harm them, how badly might they be harmed and how well is it controlled? Incident investigation, what were people doing, what went wrong, how badly COULD they have been harmed, what controls let us down, where else are these controls used and are they flawed too? The reports that I produce now are not just the injuries - I produce a graph of actual injury level against potential injury level. This way you get a picture of how close to the wind we are sailing. RIDDOR is not the tool for internal reporting, it does not give the Board the true picture. Who's been set targets for reducing RIDDORS? Ever been set a target for reducing 'near misses'? Thought not. The idea of incident investigation is NOT to stop this happening again. It's to stop this and anything similar elsewhere from happening. If we tailor investigation to the injury only - we're only trying to stop that injury from happening again. There is some work to so in respect of getting people to report 'near misses' because of the way we've always reported injuries. Look at the contents of the accident book and you'll see. This is a cultural shift I'm afraid and a whole new thread. See the point? C

Posted By Chris Jerman Hi GT It all depends on which books you read! These words mean what we decide that they mean. The point here is to get away from any connection to the injury. Accident carries the connotation of injury. Near miss means - no-one was hurt! People use accident, near miss AND incident. What do they mean? As it's the event that we need to focus on, incident or event would be fine by me.