Incident reports - Why you need them and what they should include

 
Workplace injuries, illnesses or dangerous accidents can have a big impact on your practice. As a Practice Manager you should have processes that protect the health and safety of your workers and any other people that enter your practice or clinic. This includes knowing what to do when someone gets injured. If a worker is injured or something dangerous happens at your workplace, your first responsibility is to help and protect your workers. This means making sure no one else can be hurt, providing first aid and calling an ambulance if necessary. 

All practices should have the following.

• Plans in place for when incidents and emergencies occur
• Appropriate first aid equipment and facilities
• Educated and informed workers who know what to do in an emergency e.g. processes like evacuation and first aid
• The contact number to report notifiable incidents. In Queensland this is 1300 362 128, or you can use the online incident notification form 
• An incident log to report incidents no matter how big or small. 

What is an incident report?

An incident report is a document where managers or a safety professional, records an event which may or may not have caused serious harm to an individual. These reports can be used as a tool to avoid incidents occurring in the future and decrease the occurrence of injuries in the workplace through proper investigations. 

What should the report include?

Incident reports have many components and should include in depth details about the incident. There are a few steps and components we would recommend for this process as well as, what to include in the report. These include: 

1. The most important component of the report is in relation to the details of the event. This includes:

• What happened?
• When and where did it happen?
• What tasks were being done?
• Who was involved?
• Were there any witnesses?

2. It is then important that all background information is collected, for example:

• Maintenance records
• Safe work procedures
• Instructions manuals 
• Training records

3. The next part of the report should include the potential contributing factors:

• Environment: Did environmental conditions (e.g. light, noise, floor surfaces) contribute to the incident?
• Equipment/materials: Did anything about the equipment, materials, tools etc (e.g. equipment failures, missing parts) contribute to the incident?
• Work Systems: Was there something about the system that contributed? (E.g. hazard not identified, known hazard that wasn’t addressed)?
• People: Was there something the workers, supervisors or contractors did that contributed to the incident (e.g. poor communication, being tired or rushing to finish on time)?

4. Next you should look at the primary cause/s of the incident. This means, assessing the factors that could have prevented the incident or injury. Think about asking yourself “Would the incident have happened if…?”

5. Identify they root causes/system failures that underline the primary cause/s and contributing factors

6. The final and most important step is conducting an investigation and identifying what action you can take to fix all the factors that contributed to the incident. Starting with the primary cause/s and working through each of the contributing and underlying causes. 

For serious incidents, called ‘notifiable incidents’, you will have to report it to Workplace Health and Safety Queensland as fines and penalties may apply to the practice owner if there is failure to report these types of incidents. With this information in mind, you can contact the Workplace relations team to purchase an incident report template if you do not already have one. You can contact us via email at workplacerelations@amaq.com.au or call us on 07 3872 2222. 

	Workplace Relations subscribers receive a workplace health and safety policy template in their employer manual as part of their subscription. You can contact us via phone (07) 3872 2222 and email support workplacerelations@amaq.com.au
	Workplace Relations Toolkit subscribers receive a complimentary subscription to WR News and the PMA monthly newsletter subscribers receive a range of templates for their practices as a part of the toolkit, including ones related to work health and safety.
	Workplace Relations Consultancy can assist members who have encountered a workplace incident and would like guidance on their next step. Our consultancy service can also review your current policies and procedures and provide tailored advice on what needs to be updated to remain compliant.

 

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