I fell in work

[thefishthatcouldwish]

I fell outside in work yesterday.

I slid down a muddy bank. Now my leg and knee hurting. Have no pain relief in house and no way of getting any until morning.

I have woken up after being asleep now feel very sorry for myself.

Not sure why I’m posting really.

Oh bless you. Falling is horrible hope you feel better soon

Did you not report the accident when it happened? Were you on site or in a public area? I work in a very safety conscious industry and when an employee tripped and hurt themselves on a badly maintained pavement the council was contacted by work. If you're injured then work need to know, they need to report all accidents, particularly if you are hurt.

How are you feeling now OP? Has the shock passed a little?

Thanks yes but achy but good.

It was on a school site but it was my fault. I should have risked assessed better.

IT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT. Schools are so bad at risk assessments, they can't just say it was your fault for not risk assessing properly, you had an accident on site so a root cause needs to be identified and ameliorated. And any accident (particularly one where you suffered pain later) needs to be trended so any common patterns can be identified. Does the school trend near misses (anyone else almost slipped but not, or slipped but not hurt themselves at the same location?), 'dealt with its' (someone saw the bank getting waterlogged and did something to stop that happening, or warned other staff that it was an issue), or positive actions (regular safety audits of the site are carried out so risks can be identified before an accident happens). What's your AIFR? Like I said in my last post I work in a very safety conscious industry so we do all of that and I don't really expect a school to do the formal levels of trending we do (it's interesting though, we have manufacturing facilities and labs on site but for a while the stairs in one building was the most dangerous place on site and the offices consistently have more accidents than the labs). And remember risk identification is just the start, the severity and likelihood of the risk needs to be assessed to determine if any risk reduction needs to be done before a task can be carried out and changing circumstances need to be identified.

What could have been done to reduce the risk? Were you wearing appropriate flat shoes with good grips, this is something that should probably be communicated to all staff to be aware of? Were you distracted by something (e.g. we aren't allowed to read and walk at the same time on site)? Why were you on a muddy bank, did you have to be there and could it be made safer (e.g. planting trees or bushes on it would reduce accessibility, provide something to hold onto if you did slip, but also mean it took longer to get muddy in the first place)?