Page 39 - Occupational Health & Safety, August 2018

way in reducing variation in reports. For example, a cut would be defined as an injury that occurred from material slicing through the skin. A cut is usually 1/2 inch or longer and is less than 69 per- cent of the total length of the limb/finger. An amputation could be defined as a cut that extends beyond 70 percent of the total length of the limb/finger. Conversely, a puncture is defined as a piercing of the skin from pressurized contact. The injuries from punctures are usually smaller than 1/2 inch. Cut and puncture are often used interchangeably by companies of all sizes, reducing the accuracy of the report.
Other important definitions to denote are to list the materials a person was caught between or to estimate the weight and height of an item that impacts a hand.
3. Identify Area of Injury: A Picture is Worth Thousands
Some of the largest organizations in the world have inconsistent reports that denote large body areas in their incident reports. If someone was injured on the hand/arm, there is not a lot of forward direction a safety manager can take from that. If the area is refined in the incident report to cover the palm, dorsal, and side areas, it is easier to identify protection gaps for future PPE improvement in the problem zones.
These areas should include a diagram. Visuals are easier for em- ployees to identify where the injury occurred, minimizing confu- sion. Simple diagrams to show where on the hands an employee was injured can paint a better picture for management teams look-
ing to take preventative actions. Make sure you identify the picture of the hand as palm or back of hand. A side view of the hand may be necessary because many injuries occur in the saddle of the hand when performing tasks with hands rotated. Zeroing in on the area injured visually can help safety management make better decisions about corrective actions and PPE selection.
4. Dig for Deeper Roots
Drilling down to the root cause may bring to mind “five whys” exer- cises. “Five whys” traces the incident back to a single root cause by continuing to look beyond surface reasons to an underlying cause. Its roots come from quality improvement methodologies, such as the Toyota Production System and Lean/Six Sigma (Card, 2016). Adding subcategories to root cause documentation will make it easier to identify cause in situations where a laceration is the docu- mented recordable that required stitches with a metal hazard docu- mented as the cause of injury. The caught between situation was undocumented as the root cause. Without multiple categories, the caught between incident will continue to recur, because no correc- tive actions can started on something undocumented.
5. Working in Risk Assessment
There are many who believe that risk assessment should be part of the duties of everyone in the organization. Experienced safety professionals have a realistic perception of where and how near- misses are likely to occur. Adding simplified risk analysis to inci-
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Circle 21 on card.