Incident & Accident Reporting

Purpose, Applicability, and Scope

Purpose: It shall be the policy of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to prevent injury to staff, faculty, students and visitor while on campus property and engaged in university-sponsored activities. One component of a comprehensive injury prevention program is incident/accident investigation. Non-injury accidents (also known as near misses) shall be reported using the incident report form, which is available from the Workers Compensation Office.

Applicability: This procedure shall apply to students, visitors, staff and faculty at the University of Tennessee on university property. It shall also apply to students, visitors, staff and faculty engaged in off-site, University-sponsored activities.

Procedures

1. Employees are encouraged to report on-the-job accidents as soon as possible to their immediate supervisor. This reporting should occur whether or not medical treatment is necessary.
2. When an accident occurs, the employee’s supervisor or lead employee should investigate the accident. The area where the accident occurred should be viewed and statements should be obtained from any witnesses. Questions regarding the accident/incident report should be direct to the Risk Management Office.  A Supervisors Report of Employee Accident form is available at:   http://riskmanagement.tennessee.edu
3. Environmental Health and Safety shall review all Workers Comp claims and shall investigate those where a hazard is present, where appropriate safety procedures were not followed or where personal protective equipment was not used or was defective.
4. The Risk Management Office may forward other claims (property loss, visitor accidents) and incident reports to campus Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) for review and investigation.
5. If the incident resulted in, or had the potential to result in, a serious injury or property loss it should be reported to EHS.
6. EHS will conduct a more detailed investigation and can also be contacted to investigate an accident if the supervisor :
   1. has reason to suspect that there may be fraud involved
   2. if there is a safety hazard present that can’t be removed or repaired promptly
   3. if litigation is likely
   4. if a serious process failure exists that is likely to result in additional accidents or losses
7. If any action is necessary resulting from the investigation conducted by EHS, the findings will be forward to the appropriate supervisor and/or department head.
8. EHS will track the status of any recommendations from the investigation.
9. Summary data of accidents shall be submitted periodically to the Safety Committee.
10. EHS shall investigate chemical spills/releases and fires. Summary data of these events plus the total number of OSHA reportable accidents shall be entered into the EHS quarterly metric report that is submitted to the Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration.  In addition the end-of-year summary report of these metrics shall go to the Safety Committee.
11. The campus director of EHS shall review motor vehicles accident reports periodically and take action where necessary. In addition, this individual shall review the monthly OSHA 300 log and conduct investigations as needed.

Recordkeeping

The Risk Management Office shall maintain all records of accidents, claims and incidents for at least five years.  EHS shall maintain records associated with investigations for at least five years.

Documentation and records of accidents and losses that are expected to result in litigation or take years to settle shall be kept more than five years.

Training and Information

Incoming employees shall be informed of the process to report accidents and near misses during new employee orientation.  Supervisors shall be informed of the accident reporting process during the Supervisor’s Safety class, which is sponsored by Employee and Organizational Development. Current employees shall be reminded of the accident and near miss reporting process annually via Tennessee Today.

 

Disclaimer

The information provided in this program is designed for educational use only and is not a substitute for specific training or experience.

The University of Tennessee Knoxville and the authors of this program assume no liability for any individual’s use of or reliance upon any material contained or referenced herein. The material contained in this program may not be the most current.

This material may be freely distributed for nonprofit educational use. However, if included in publications, written or electronic, attributions must be made to the author. Commercial use of this material is prohibited without express written permission from the author.