Not caused by a workplace accident and not a specified injury = Not  RIDDOR

Totally agree, not RIDDOR.  However, not RIDDOR doesn't mean don't make a detailed record for your own files, taking all factors into account just in case the IP (or his representative ambulance chaser) wants to come back and say that it was work related stress that was the catalyst for the stroke or some other such stuff that people claim for these days.

Just get your documents in order, find out what he was working on and make a dossier - just in case.

Originally Posted by: Hsquared14

RIDDOR applies only to work related injuries and very specific work related / caused illnesses, strokes do not fall under the remit of RIDDOR and should not be reported

As far as I know, stress is not reportable

Hi all,

We had a very similar situation whereby one of the employees had a stroke. They recovered but were unable to perform their normal work. Unfortunately, at the time we had no alternative work for them and had to let them go. The person is now accusing us of negligence and threatening with a claim for compensation.

When they had a stroke, their co-worker reacted quickly, ambulance was called and they were taken to hospital. We did not report under RIDDOR as this was a medical episode and they were performing their normal day to day work.

However, now I wonder what chances they have to make a successful claim against the company?

Thanks

Kate,

There is no official allegation as yet. However, they are claiming their stroke was caused by lifting at work which was part of their normal working day, task assessed and risk controlled.

I do not feel this claim would be succesful, but thought I would ask if anyone had similar experience.

There are many underlying conditions and health issues which a business can not know, nor control - as exampled by recent reports of what would have been deemed fit & healthy footballers hanging up their boots due to medical incident or screening identifying underlying heart problems.

A relative worked as a nursing auxilliary for many years lifting patients - what we did not know was she also had an aortic aneurysm that could have killed her at any time before undergoing succesful corrective surgery.

Lifestyle, diet, age all affect the inner body - if solely lifting resulted in stroke the human race would have long since moved on.

As Kate says someone has had time to brood and is now seeking to lash out over the life that could have been

At a previous employer we had an employee who was diagnosed with breast cancer. She blamed the business, including suggesting “the dirty desks” in the shared office were responsible for her condition.

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/173/3/330/129869

If I've read that right, regular physical activity reduces your chances of having a particular sort of stroke, but people who did have a stroke of that sort were found to have been more likely than average to have been doing something strenuous immediately prior to the stroke.  The difference is even more pronounced among people who normally aren't normally physically active. 

Within 1 hour of physical activity, the the risk of stroke onset was on average 2.3 times higher compared with periods of lower activity or rest, though actually it's 2x higher for regularly active people and 6.8x higher for sedentary people.  That is, among active people who had a relevant stroke, 5% of them had been doing something strenuous within the previous hour, though on average only 2.5% of similarly-active people would have been doing something strenuous in the hour before a randomly selected daytime time (when they didn't have a stroke).

So possibly, regular physical activity (such as regular lifting at work which is part of your normal working day) makes you less likely to have a stroke, but if you're going to have one it will be more likely after physical activity than not.

I'm still not going to add stroke to my manual handling risk assessments.