To diagnose or not to diagnose

[stephen1974]

I am about to create a new 1st aid form for work so I can better track causes and type of injury.

An issue that is probably going to come up is that I have a senior manager who doesn't believe we should be putting a diagnoses of an injury on the form in case we get it wrong and that leaves us open to a claim. - I'm going to roll my eyes now see.

In my opinion thats a lot of nonsense.
1. We are general protected from such things in this country by the good samaritans act. (Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act 2015)
2. As a 1st aider, you can't treat someone if you don't diagnose what their injuries are.

I've come across people who claim you shouldnt diagnose before, normally people telling me not to do it when I fill in a form, but I ignore them and roll my eyes. just like that.

So, what do you guys tell your guys? Should we be putting on 1st aid forms what we believe the injury to be? or do I need to roll my eyes again?

[Messy]

I am surrounded by managers scared of litigation, it drives me mad! Cant you use a title on the form 'Supposed Diagnosis' or similar. That gives you some turning space later if you need it

I would ask what do you hope to achieve by recording the diagnosis info in this form?

[stephen1974]

Trying to associate injury type to activity type.

Example do, do we get more broken legs than broken arms on a trampoline? is this linked to flips, walkovers, bouncing etc...

At the moment the industry is only interested in the amount of injuries (doesnt care what type) vs number of hours a park is open (timsed by the number of people through the door) That way it makes the numbers look tiny.

1 injury a week can be written up as 1 injury in 52,000 hours of operation.

I want to be able to identify things such as, what type of trick is most likely to cause an injury, and if its a severe injury or not. I also want to be able to point at a piece of equipment and say, we've had 0 accidents on that equipment, so why are you telling us we shouldnt be using it? - which is something that is happening in the industry with knee jerk reactions from people who don't take the time to understand things.

I dont want to be sucking the fun out of an environment because people dont know what the hell else to do, and I don't want people to be hurt if there is a sensible way to keep them safer.

[Safetysmurf]

I cant see why you cant record injury type.
I record things like slips, trips and falls, struck by moving object, fall from height, etc. and body part injured.
Day of the week, month, over 7 day injury, riddor, etc. (could be trends)
There is so much information that can be collected and analysed and trends to be found. From the trends, accidents can be reduced.
Last year i identified a trend with hand injuries - looked deeper into it and found most were from minor cuts so i introduced a mandatory glove policy on site. It worked as this reduced minor cuts from 12 down to 2 in a year.
As for diagnosis - the main reason for first aid is to preserve life until a professional medical person can take over the treatment.
But i dont believe anybody has ever been successfully sued for trying to save someones life
Why use the term diagnosis? Just use a form that has near miss/incident/accident on?

Just my thoughts.
SS

[andybz]

Can any first aider 'diagnose'? I think this is only for medical professionals. First aiders will treat according to the symptoms presented by the casualty. I would expect the first aiders report to be along the lines of "the casualty had the following symptoms XXX. On this basis the following actions was taken XXX."

Any further analysis of the event would not, in my opinion, be part of the first aid report. The cause of an event requires an investigation of the circumstances, which I think would be a separate report.

[stephen1974]

Some things are pretty obvious, and in the case of RIDDOR, you have to make a diagnosis in order to determin if something is RIDDORable. You treat the symptoms, but you have to advise in regards to a diagnosis otherwise you risk people going off and doing themselves further harm.

The 'on this basis' part, is the defination of making a diagnosis. - Identification of a problem based on symptoms.

[bunster]

On my accident report form I have a pictogram of a human body which the 1st aider can mark where the injury is. Written below is a description of the injury. If your looking to complete a trend analysis of different types of injury this is all you really need.
Forget the term diagnosis if you think it will ruffle your managers feathers but a factual description of the injury should be on the form
Happy to PM you what i use.

[stephen1974]

The ones I create normally have that diagram on it to sho location with a little tick box section next to it saying, lacertion, bruise, fracture etc...

I'll be doing the same on this new form and will argue this whole nonsense of not 'diagnosing' the problem. Cheers folks.