Health and Safety for Beginners Forums

Hi all

Looking at a bit of information on accident investigation, what happens if the person injured is on the sick and there are no creditable witnesses, how do we do an accident investigation?

(edited to say that, it has been recorded in the first aid book)

Any replies will be kindly received.

af

Hi af,

Good question and a situation I have found myself in a number of times over in the past. When an accident happens we should aim to investigate imminently in order to define the root causes and control measures required. Witness statements are a good way of capturing first hand what happened and the sooner we can get these statements the better as it is fresh on the mind. That being said you can't just rely on witness statements and find the root causes, unfortunately some statements can be false and from past experience I have taken statements and after the investigation it turns out it was a totally different cause.

Without knowing the extent of the accident theres a number of things you can do in the mean time whilst your employee recovers;

1. Begin the investigation and develop a root cause analysis to determine the immediate, underlying and root causes.
2. Review any evidence such as inspection records, training documents, maintenance logs
3. When getting in touch with the employee who has accident, inform them if a suitable time can be made to go through what happened (I'd avoid saying 'investigations' as this can cause stress and panic, instead a catch up whereby its recorded).
4. Look into all processes, equipment, envrionment and persons that were involved in the task, activity where the accident happened
5. Why, Why, Why, Why, Why - Keep asking this question in your head as you go through the investigation.

Hope this helps,

regards

Craig

Thank you Craig, much appreciated.

Af

You're welcome, happy to help.

Craig

Do you have an HR department?
Get them to follow up on the IP and arrange for the IP to come in for interview. Use HR to ensure legal compliance is employed. That is their job