Safety is Everyone's Business: Report All Injuries & Near Misses

Mary Logue
Environment, Safety, Health & Quality
Associate Director

Good safety is good business, and safety at Jefferson Lab is everyone's business. Whether you are a physicist, technician, administrator, subcontractor, user or student, you need to maintain a level of safety awareness, train appropriately and work safely on a daily basis. And when an injury or near-miss incident occurs, you must report it.

Reporting incidents or mishaps is as important as avoiding them. Last year, there were a few cases where employees didn't report injuries or delayed in reporting them. If injuries aren't promptly and properly diagnosed and treated, they can get worse, which can result in additional pain and recovery time. Improper or delayed reporting can also potentially impact a worker's compensation benefits or lead to a reprimand.

It is equally important to report near-miss incidents. We learn from every situation and we post lessons learned on the ESH&Q webpage. We learn as much from a near-miss situation as from a mishap, and with a near-miss report we have the opportunity to prevent a similar or more devastating event from happening at JLab or another Department of Energy laboratory. We can save lives, prevent disabling injuries and save potentially lost time and money by effectively investigating and learning from all mishaps and near misses.

All injuries are to be reported to your supervisor and Occupational Medicine. Even if you believe the injury to be minor and you’ve treated yourself, either you or your supervisor needs to call Occupational Medicine at ext. 7539. Medical staff will assess whether they need you to come in for further evaluation. If the injury is truly minor, they will note the information in their first aid log and disseminate that information to your supervisor, the division safety officers and a limited number of people in ESH&Q.

Near-miss situations should be reported immediately to your supervisor, safety warden or division safety officer, and to Lead Quality & Safety Engineer Stephen Smith, ext. 7007.

To prevent similar or even more serious mishaps, safety staff looks at each incident to figure out the cause(s) and how to prevent recurrence. In addition, trends in "minor" events can warn of the potential for more serious events.

Our goal is that everyone comes to work on a given day in good shape, does their work, and goes home in that same good shape or better. We need your help in meeting this goal. We need you to tell us where we need to look.

Together we make Jefferson Lab a great place to work and a safe place to work.

Mary Logue
Environment, Safety, Health & Quality
Associate Director