Quick and accurate investigation

"Skedsvold & White
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Now that you've taken care of your injured Worker's immediate medical needs, what next? You need to find out what happened. Remember, workers' compensation is a no fault system. Neither the injured Worker's negligence nor that of the co-employee is the point of the investigation. We're not looking to place blame, we need to know what happened, how it happened and how this injury could have been prevented. To be sure, accidents happen and sometimes they are not preventable. A proper root cause analysis of most industrial accidents can show where things went wrong and allow the employer and the employees to know where the flaws in the process might be. To illustrate, let's investigate a hand injury from entrapment on a conveyor belt. Is the scene maintained? If the machine is already cleaned and back in operation, there's little chance that your investigation is going to produce anything but an educated guess so early investigation of the scene of the accident as it appeared as close to the injury as possible is optimum. Photographic evidence may be helpful and should be encouraged wherever possible. After checking out WHERE the injury happened, talking with the eyewitnesses is next. Getting essential information (names, nicknames, phone numbers and email addresses) about all possible witnesses will help you, your insurance carrier and, in the God forbid scenario, your attorney locate these witnesses in the future. You should be prepared to provide names, home addresses, email and phone contacts to anyone investigating the injury on your behalf. Witness statements are a good idea as they provide contemporaneous information as to what happened in the witness' own words, in the witness' own hand as a buffer not only against fading memory but also against changing stories. If possible witnesses should be interviewed separately in order to preserve the integrity of each witness' recollection without worry of contamination of one witness' story by another. When the witnesses have been interviewed and the scene reviewed, what conclusions can be drawn? Was the injured worker careless or for some reason distracted? Did the machine malfunction or was there some other defect in the machine that led to the incident? Was the injured worker impaired? We'll discuss each of these scenarios in subsequent postings.