quote=safetyamateur]Have to say I'm baffled by the amount of traffic on the RIDDOR issue - now or the past.
Those regulations have always been waaaaaaaaay down my list of priorities. I do understand that some of your employers are twitchy when it comes to insurance but has there really been no effort to convince these companies (who, let's not forget, are risk people) that it's not a true performance indicator?
Not ranting, just curious.
I agree in that there does seem to be a lot of traffic about RIDDOR. I find it comes up from insurers, local authority tenders etc. I suppose they have to use some measure of accident history and it is probably the only common standard - when it comes to defining injuries.
In our organisation, we use Assessnet, the online accident system, which sends a RIDDOR alert to me and the administrators when someone ticks a box on the system that the injury is an over three day one. We are a large national multi site social care organisation. With about 2000 injuries a year, I have to target my resources and the 50 RIDDORs that come to my attention are very useful for that. It is one of my tools to give me an idea of what is going on out there and enable me to make sure that investigations completed by our managers are completed thoroughly - so they can stand up to the rigours of courts and insurance claims.
Another aspect of RIDDOR is that parts are confusing and require judgement. A frequent one that crops up in my line of work is when to report injuries to people we support (people with learning disabilities) that are taken to hospital from the scene. For it to be reportable it has to be in connection with work - rather than simply being a health condition, but so often this is a grey area. For example, if someone falls over and injures themselves because they have epilepsy or are unsteady on their feet, if a member of staff is gently supporting them at the time - maybe we should have had more staff on shift or may be less harsh objects in the care home - or may be not. The usual answer from the now gone-HSE incident contact centre was that if it is in relation to someone's health condition it is not reportable - unless it is someone's fault?
Other parts of RIDDOR that seem a bit strange are the threshold between major and over three day. e.g broken nose - if it's the bone it's major, if it's cartilage it is not! The list of dangerous occurrences is rather strange too!