Lesson 1: Accidents and Incidents

Lesson 1: Accidents and Incidents

Workplace Safety

Safety programs have come a long way. Companies have studied the mistakes of the past and have used these lessons to improve safe practices.

These improvements help to decrease the number of workplace injuries and deaths.

In the past, safety programs were designed to protect workers from injuries.

Most people believed that injuries were caused by workers performing unsafe acts.
 
Therefore, safety programs focused on training workers to practice safe work habits, to reduce the number of unsafe acts.

The focus was on workers and the solution was often to find someone to blame.

Not only have safety programs changed, but also some definitions, as they relate to worksite safety, have also changed.

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Incidents

In the past, incidents were seen as a "near accident" or a "near miss".

Incidents are still recognized as a near miss, but if the near miss could have caused harm, then it is investigated as an accident.

An incident usually refers to an unexpected event that had the potential to cause injury or damage.

Every incident should be investigated; the procedure includes writing an incident report and analyzing the causes of the incident.  You will learn more about causation in the next lesson.

Although every incident should be investigated by an organization's management and trained staff, some incidents must be reported to the Government of Alberta. If you are unsure about whether to report the incident, call it in to the Government of Alberta's Workplace Health and Safety Contact Centre at 1-866-415-8690.  This contact centre accepts calls 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Accidents

Accidents were considered to be an "undesired event that resulted in harm to people".

The definition of an accident has now changed to be an incident that has caused one or more of:

•     injuries to workers

•     property damage

•     environmental damage

•     loss of productivity

•     loss of profits

You can see that the definition now includes a wider scope as it relates to worksite safety.

It's important to also investigate accidents in order to gather information about the accident, analyze the cause and put control measures in place to prevent the accident from occurring again.