Everyone is responsible for clinical and occupational safety.  Part of this responsibility is to report incidents, near misses and equipment/facility hazards.

 

An incident is an event or circumstance that could have, or did lead to unintended and/or unnecessary harm.

 

A near miss is an incident that had the potential to cause harm but didn't, due to timely intervention and/or luck and/or chance.

 

A clinical incident is an incident or near miss involving a patient or resident.

 

An occupational health and safety (OHS) incident is an incident or near miss involving staff, students, volunteers, contractors, family members, friends, carers and other members of the public.

 

Effective Incident reporting enables the organisation to monitor workplace safety, to determine the cause of incidents so that appropriate corrective action can be taken to prevent a reoccurrence and to provide information to relevant groups within the organisation for purposes of safety promotion, monitoring and control. 

 

If you, a patient or visitor are injured at Gippsland Southern Health, you must notify your supervisor immediately. The learning institutions where you come from will have their own policy on work place injury and incidents and the protocol in which you should follow. It is important to become familiar with this prior to placement.

 

For clinical incidents, students must notify staff of any clinical incidents and work with the staff member to complete an incident report.