What should the summary of an incident report contain

Good incident reports will feature all of these six key elements and help ensure that organizations keep on top of their incident reporting.

If your organization is looking to make smarter incident reporting decisions, drive operational excellence and create a culture of continuous safety improvement, having a good incident report form is essential.

News What is happening around us. What is an incident report? What is considered an incident? It could mean: An event A condition, or A situation Most commonly, incidents are thought of as an event, such as a trip, a fall or a workplace accident. Creates negative attention public perception or media attention A good incident report should help document all of these incidents and more!

What makes a good incident report? Incident reports can be paper-based or electronically generated and are a way of capturing and documenting any of the following things: Accidents Injuries Near-misses Property damage Equipment damage Health and safety issues Security breaches physical or electronic Workplace misconduct issues Potential risks when used as part of a Safety document , and Uncontrolled hazards What separates a standard incident report from a good one?

Critically, a good incident report will help a company in three key ways. Element 1. Holistic The first key element of a good incident report is that it should be holistic. Lagging indicators Lagging indicators refer to incidents that are reported after they have occurred, such as: Recorded injuries Citations Employee compensation claims As lagging indicators are reported retrospectively — after the fact — your organization must use the collected data to inform decisions about what actions to take in the future to prevent them from occurring again.

These include: Near misses Behavioural observations Safety meetings Job observations Training records Leading indicators can be tracked to indicate the likelihood of incidents occurring in the future. Holistic also means that the incident report form covers the four main types of incidents. Near misses These are situations where people could have been injured, but, luckily nothing came to pass. Near misses need to be reported as important lagging and leading indicators.

A good incident report form will help communicate and raise awareness of these incidents across an organization to raise awareness of what might happen in the future. For example, if two types of chemicals used during a production process are found to react together adversely, this would be classified as a no-harm event.

Staff across the entire organization should be made aware of this operational risk. Adverse events Adverse events are related to medicines, medical devices, and vaccines. They occur during patient treatment or management, rather than from a pre-existing condition. Sentinel events Sentinel events are unexpected events that resulted in any type of harm physical, psychological, etc.

Element 2: Accurate The second essential element of a good incident report form is accuracy. However, some errors can only be spotted by humans.

Were there any injuries? Yes No Was there any damage to property or plant? Yes No What caused the incident? Element 3: Objective The third key element of a good incident report is that is should be supported by facts and be objective, rather than being biased.

There are several ways to put objectivity at the heart of an incident report. Whether reporting an employee or customer injury, a defective product, property damage, or any other type of incident, it is extremely important for an organization to be able to easily and efficiently create reports. We've discussed the benefits , but what should actually be included in these incident reports? The amount of detail that goes into incident reporting in your organization really depends on your organization: its size, claim frequency, and so on.

Smartsheet has some excellent free templates that can give you an idea of the layout. However, there are some basic guidelines for what should be included in any report, such as:. This is one of the most important details to include, as insurance providers, managers, and others will need to know when the incident happened. It's easy to forget specific details after weeks or months have passed, so don't assume you will remember this information. Be as specific as possible: state the address of the location as well as the specific area within the building or property.

Putting false information in an incident report will only cause more damage later if it is proven to be untrue. Include details about what happened before the incident, the incident itself, and actions that were taken immediately after.

If you are writing down your opinion of what caused the incident or what you think happened, be sure to note that it is an assumption. Physical injuries will have to be assessed by a medical professional and added to the report later. However, a brief summary of how severe or minor damages appear to be can be useful to note at the time of the incident. Any relevant property damage can also be summarized. How to Handle an Accident 1.

Offer medical assistance If the person is unconscious or severely injured, call immediately. Remove the person from the area or clear the area around them If the injured party is safely able to move, bring them to another room to rest away from crowds of people if they desire.

Complete an incident report Once the injured party is taken care of, you must fully document the incident. Report the accident to your insurance provider and other relevant parties Be aware that if the incident required an ambulance, you are legally obligated to notify Occupational Health and Safety. Conduct an incident assessment Part of this process should be undertaken while the injured party is still on site, if possible. Use the incident to improve your risk mitigation techniques Mistakes and incidents in any organization are inevitable; however, there are many strategies to limit the number and severity of these occurrences.

Now What? Topics risk management plan incident report risk analysis liability risk handling an accident handling an incident. Subscribe to our Blog. The 5 Step Risk Management Process. Your comments are welcome.