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Posted By John Halloran
Consider this situation - An employee has a minor injury (first aid or a little worse), does not attend work for the following 3 + days and self-certifies on his/her return. This is automatically reported as a RIDDOR as over three days were lost due to an workplace incident. I have experienced incidents that were reported as RIDDORS although the injury did not warrent it. I would appreciate any advice, information or experiences fellow H&S professionals may have had in relation to this issue.
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Posted By shaun allport
may be wrong???????
but was it a accident recieved in connection with his work?
If so did it result in 3+ days off including non normal working days
Then its RIDDOR!
simple, i didn't write the rules
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Posted By Lee Thompson
Yes, doesn't matter how minor the injury.
If an employee was off work for over 3 days as a result of just a splinter, then it would still be RIDDOR reportable.
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Posted By chrys r martin
I agree with the above comments, it is reportable, sadly it does dilute the intention of the reportable incident, and must give HSE a shed full of paperwork to sift through
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Posted By Heather Aston
John
Frustrating situation. Report it, investigate to the best of your ability, institute improvement actions, record it and move on to the next thing!
We've all seen this kind of thing but don't let it bother you. RIDDOR reporting does not equal blame as we've discussed here several times before. However not reporting does equal potential enforcement action simply for not reporting, however trivial the incident seemed.
Heather
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Posted By Mike Craven
I can sympathise with people where an employee appears to be over-stating or over-playing the results of an accident by taking what may appear to be an excessive amount of sick leave. I can also understand people's frustrations about certain aspects of RIDDOR; the bit about counting rest days (particularly weekends and bank-holidays) is particularly annoying for those of us whose business generally operates from Monday to Friday.
However, I would make two comments on this one;
1) As someone has already said (sort of), the key is to deal with the accident investigation and move on. We all now about links between near misses, minor accidents, major accidents. etc.
2) The first sentence of the original posting says that there was "a minor injury (first aid or a LITTLE WORSE"). What is meant by a "little worse"?. If it went beyond first aid, it sounds pretty serious to me!!!???
Mike
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Posted By John Murgatroyd
Riddor it.
But, who said the injury was minor ?
The first aider ?
So many of these folks seem to asume the mantle of virtual A&E consultant when they gain their 4 day medical and diagnostic training (sarcasm)
I was "diagnosed" as "no injury, just bruising" by another 4-day wonder when a half-tonne metal beam droped onto my hand. I went to hospital where the A&E consultant, after looking at an xray, decided that I had fractured a bone and torn a tendon....the first aider still considered that I was uninjured and probably lying to get compensation....so I (on a clinic appointment) had the consultant write a proper report of the injury...the guy STILL insisted that I wasn't injured.....
Moral ?
First aiders are rarely right, and shouldn't be believed. Get PROPER medical aid whenever possible. (another first aid guy thought that a bloke had indigestion....the ambulance crew thought it was a heart attack....the first aider wasn't right, the crew were)
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Posted By Richie
RIDDOR requires you to provide information by the fastest means in the first instance.
If you were to explain the circumstances on the phone to the HSE they should, given the Government's "lets cut red tape" initiative, inform you that no further action is needed.
Maybe IOSH should provide an opportunity to log such red tape incidents? I am sure the NAO would find such information interesting when assessing the performance of these key Government offices, and MPs would have available to them a huge resource of bad practice anecdotes with which to bash these departments over the head every so often. I'm thinking about HSE, DTI, FSA etc.
Obviously there would be a large self discipline issue, however ‘put up and shut up’ will change nothing. I know of no other opportunity to log such incidents.
Richie.
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Posted By Adam Jackson
What is the problem with reporting it? If its for in-house stats then if you do think its been over stressed you can take it out on the grounds of reasonable doubt to the seriousness of the injury. RIDDOR reporting shouldn't make much difference though, particularly to how the company acts on the info from the accident.
I had a case 8 or 9 years ago when I worked for a bakery. One employee had a motorbike which he needed to start up for a few minutes every break or it wouldn't start at the end of the day. One lunchtime he was running it and crouching next to it fiddling with some obscure bit of it as bike owners seem to like doing. He toppled backwards and grabbed the hot exhaust to stop himself, quite badly burning his hand. He was not being paid at the time, was on his lunch and fidding with his own motorbike but when I asked the HSE the response was still that it was reportable under RIDDOR as it was on company premises. Fair enough, we reported it, but we didn't include it on the in-house stats.
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Posted By garyh
The issue here is, I believe, that we are paid to MANAGE Health & Safety. Anyone can just read from the RIDDOR regs - we have to make judgements.
In my experience (eg 10 years in a MAJOR blue chip company) these things do happen, where people have a minor "non reportable" Injury then take "time off". If this happened, and I was CERTAIN that it was a First Aid Injury only, then I would not report it under RIDDOR. However, I would document my reasoning (eg on accident investgation report), and be prepared to justify it.
One reason why certain companies have incredibly low accident rates is that they acitively manage all injuries as above..........read into that what you will.
The issue arises when you as the SHE Professional are certain that an incident/injury IS RIDDOR reportable, and the "Powers that be" want you to "declassify". This is something we must not give in to.
To summarise, we are paid to Manage and take responsibility, not to accept everything at face value and mindlessly quote regs.
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Posted By Adam Jackson
Sorry Gary, but I can't support that. There a regulations supporting H&S and at times if it says something must be done then we do not have the privilidge of deciding otherwise. Sure we can make changes in how something is applied to take account of individual circumstance, but we can't decide if it is to be applied. So if RIDDOR says a case is reportable then end of story, its reportable.
Where does the alternative view end? So as a H&S professional we determine that actually an injury is not as bad as is being claimed and that although it fits into the RIDDOR 3-day rule, we decide that we will ignore it. The following week the production boss wants to demolish an asbestos wall, he decides that contractors are too expensive and that asbestos hazards are over-hyped therefore he will ignore the raft of regs and just get one of the maintenance lads to hit it with a big hammer.
In summary, we can change and modify how legal requirements are met, but not whether we will apply them.
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Posted By Aidan Toner
Respondents dont seem to be getting excited about cause. Maybe it was, maybe it was,nt a minor injury?? But have you got cause firmly established.??It's this bit which has to be known and remedial action recorded.
As from last June 04, failure to follow HSG 245-Investigating Accidents And Incidents provides HSE with a straight forward entry route into both your 'professional and corporate accident investigating standards'--.AND i do agree with previous repondent you cant buck the system, conditions of reporting are conditions of reporting end of story.You could of course attach the findings of your 'return to work' interview with your submitted 2508 which puts all in correct context.
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