Incident notification
All incidents, injuries and near misses must be reported using council's incident notification system.
Council has a requirement for all injury, illness and incidents to be reported regardless of the outcome. Any event that has potential to or has impacted on the health and safety of a person must be reported to the council representative that has engaged your business or is coordinating the event. Council views any minor incident or event as an opportunity to prevent something more significant occurring in the future. For this reason, all incidents and near misses must be reported.
Notifying an incident to WHS Queensland
The Work Health and Safety Act 2011 sets out what sort of incidents are notifiable to WHS Queensland. An incident is notifiable if it arises out of the conduct of a business or undertaking and results in the death, serious injury or serious illness of a person or involves a dangerous incident.
The WHS Queensland website clearly defines when an injury or illness is serious and what is a dangerous incident. It is important that all workers are aware of the varying degrees of injury, illness and incidents so you can determine when you need to notify WHS Queensland of an event.
Definition of an incident
An incident is an unplanned, undesired event that hinders completion of a task and may cause injury, illness, or property damage or some combination of all three in varying degrees from minor to catastrophic.
'Unplanned and undesired' does not mean:
- unable to prevent
- unable to prepare for.
Crisis planning is how we prepare for serious incidents that require response for mitigation.
Definition of a near miss
A near miss is a subset of incidents that could have resulted in injury, illness or property damage, if given a different set of circumstances, but didn't. Near misses are also known as 'close calls.' Perhaps the better term to consider is 'near hit’.
Definition of an accident
An accident is often similar to incident, but supports the mindset that it could not have been prevented. An accident is the opposite of the fundamental intentions of a safety program, which is to find hazards, fix hazard, and prevent incidents. When we accept that accidents have no cause, we assume that they will happen again.