Only about 10% of the participants in my training sessions report that their organization requires formal accident statements from victims or witnesses. Most simply use the 5 or 6 lines found on their investigation reports to capture this information. For those that have a separate statement page requirement virtually 100% of them simply get the witness to write their statement and attach it to the report. Seldom are the statement contents ever closely examined, nor as class participants have stated, are they of much value.

Not every workplace accident needs to be examined or documented in great detail. Given remote sites and the lack of readily available investigators these “write ‘em out yourself and send ’em in statements” will be around forever. However, for those situations where the stakes are higher we need to do a better job of collecting information. Here are a couple of ideas that might improve the worth of a statement.

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Telephone Interviews. . .

This might be your smile for the day.

The KISS idea works well for accident report writing. (Not to be confused with taking statements mentioned above where more detail is better!)

We’ve all seen that sort of writing:

For the purposes of a non-pre-scheduled process of elective rehydration by means of the ingestion of a pre-prepared alkaloid infusion delivered by an on- demand user-operated dose-consistent process, the victim was of necessity engaged in a stepwise incrementation of his personal potential energy quotient by means of a progressive elevation of his bodily mass using a pre-existing manual- process “step-and-riser” system originally installed at facility commissioning in accordance with standards then operative in re workplace standards & facilities standards currently pertaining. During this process, said victim experienced an unpredicted decrement in personal adhesion due to a local area of out-of- specification frictional coefficient due to an adventitious “pooling” of non-pre-admixed solvent designed for subsequent admixture with an anionic/amphoteric surfactant product by a routine preventive anti-contamination operative, leading to said adhesion falling below the stress/shear tolerance necessary for the continuation of the said process. This was followed by a rapid non-linear reduction in potential energy and the resultant transductive process caused the application of kinetic but non- fracturing shear stresses to the victim’s dextro- patellar region and subsequent contusion and minor haematomata . . .

When what really happened was. . .

The victim of the incident was going upstairs to get a coffee from the machine when he slipped on a puddle of water left by a cleaner and fell downstairs. He banged his knee in the fall, and bruised it. . .

Source: From Kelvin TOP SET Newsletter