Page 165 - Risk Management for Outdoor Programs

Chapter Summary 1. Incident reporting can help organizations understand incident causes and improve safety. 2. Incident reports can be used to defend against legal claims. 3. Incident reports should include the who, what, where, when, how, and why of an incident. 4. Incident reports should be generated following any nontrivial injury, accident, illness, fatality, property damage, or near miss. 5. A brief log entry in place of a complete incident report is sufficient for very minor incidents. 6. Incident reports should be delivered to program managers within 24 hours if possible. 7. Incident reports should be distributed to all relevant organizational staff and the Risk Management Committee. 8. Appropriate immediate action should be taken after each incident. 9. Incident data should be aggregated and analyzed, and action steps developed. 10. Learning from the incidents, including recommendations and directives, should be distributed to all stakeholders. 11. Statistical analysis charts and reports summarizing incident information are tools to understand and learn from incidents. 12. Medical facility visit forms, SOAP notes, evacuation reports, and chronological narratives may be used in incident documentation. 13. It is important to maintain an organizational culture that supports full and candid incident reporting. 14. Organizations may choose to join industry-wide initiatives to collect and share incident data. 15. Incident reports may not be private documents in some legal proceedings, but complete, thorough incident reporting is generally advisable; legal counsel can provide guidance. Chapter 15: Incident Reporting 155