What are the 4 Types of Incident Reports?

1. Sentinel events – these are unexpected occurrences that resulted in serious physical or
psychological injury or death (e.g., slips, trips and falls, natural disasters, vehicle
accidents, disease outbreak, etc.).
Worker injury incident
Environmental incident
Property damage incident
Vehicle incident
Fire incident
2. Near misses – these are situations where the people involved had no injuries but could
have been potentially harmed by the risks detected.
3. Adverse events – related to medicine, vaccines, and medical devices (in compliance with
ISO 14971). These events occur when an act of commission or omission harmed a patient
rather than from the existing disease or condition.
4. No harm events – these are incidents that need to be communicated across an
organization to raise awareness of any harm that may happen.

Effective Incident Reporting

An incident report should state all the essential information about the accident or near-miss. It
should contain the following key elements to ensure that all facts and necessary details are
complete and properly documented.

An incident report should be:

Accurate

All data must be clear and specific. Most inaccuracies are due to typos and simple grammar and
spelling errors (e.g. incorrect details of names of people involved, date and time of the incident,
contact numbers, etc.). Provide more specific details of what you are referring to and avoid any
vague statements that may cause confusion. Lastly, always proofread your report before
submission to see errors that you might have overlooked.

Factual

An incident report should be objective and supported by facts. Avoid including emotional,
opinionated, and biased statements in the incident report. It should provide both sides of the story
and should not favor one side. However, if there’s a need to include statements from witnesses or
patients, make sure to quote them.
Complete

Ensure that all essential questions (what, where, when, why, and how) are covered in the incident
report. Record not only the people who were injured and what caused the accident to happen, but
also include details such as people who witnessed and reported the incident or those who will
conduct an investigation. Anticipate what other significant details will be needed for any future
study and investigation.

Graphic

Photos, diagrams, and illustrations should be included as supporting evidence. Take many photos
of the injury, damage, and surrounding environment. This supplements the facts stated and
provides more clarity to be easily understood by the recipient.

Valid

Upon completion, those who are involved in the incident (e.g. victim, witnesses, manager,
reporter, etc.) should sign off to testify and validate all the information that was mentioned in the
incident report. This confirms that the incident report is truthful and unquestionable.
How to Write an Incident Report: A Step-by-Step Guide

Scenario: In one of the warehouses of a manufacturing company in Blaxland, at around 10:30

AM, a forklift was reported to have bumped into crates.

Step 1: Provide Fundamental Information

Following the outline of an incident report form, the first thing you would want to collect are the
fundamental information. You can do this by answering the following questions:

What type of injury was caused, if any? Was it fatal or non-fatal?

Was there any property damage?

When and where did it take place?

What task was being done at the time when the incident occurred?

What was the environment like?

Using the scenario above, the first section of your report would begin to look something like this:

Incident Report Sample fig. 1

In our incident report example, we took advantage of adding photo evidence to better illustrate
the environment where the incident took place. Notice that the photo attached had an annotation.
Annotating gives the reader(s) of your report a clearer idea of what to look at. It is helpful in
cases where the area of the incident is wide and contains a lot of elements.

Step 2: Take Note of Any Damages and Injuries

The next thing you would want to do is to determine the results of the said incident. Did it cause
any damage or injure anyone? If so, you should describe it in detail and if appropriate, provide
photo evidence of the damage.

Continuing with the scenario, it was determined that the incident caused injury to one of the
employees. According to the company’s physician, the injury obtained might only be muscle
bruising. However, under the physician’s orders, the injured employee underwent other medical
tests to determine other possible injuries. Using this information, you can then include it in the
report like this:

Incident Report Sample fig. 2

Step 3: Identify Affected Individual(s)

Provide the names of the people involved along with their job details such as title, shift
arrangement, and other relevant information. Using the same example, the individual who
obtained the injury, Samuel, is taken note of along with his job details in the incident report.

Incident Report Sample fig. 3

Step 4: Identify Witnesses and Take Their Statements

Record the names of people present during the incident and gather their statements. These will be
valuable in understanding the sequence of events that led to the incident and may even provide
you a better insight into whether or not the behavior of the affected employees was a factor that
contributed to the injury or damage. Witnesses’ statements can be noted verbatim or paraphrased.
Remember to have the witnesses sign off on their statements to verify the accuracy of what has
been recorded.

Continuing with the given scenario, it was determined that another employee was with Samuel
when the incident occurred. His name and statement are included in the report and he is asked to
sign off to attest that everything he said wasn’t hearsay.

Incident Report Sample fig. 4

Step 5: Take Action

This refers to the actions that should be taken after the incident. It includes corrective actions that
will eliminate recurrence of the incident. The corrective actions section of your incident report
can also include the actions that you need to take in order to complete the report.

For example, in the scenario, in Bradley’s statement (the witness), it was discovered that the
incident may have occurred due to Samuel’s (the injured employee) failure to perform a pre-start
inspection of the forklift before operation. To verify this, you may assign members of your
organization to check security footage and maintenance records of the forklift used. With that,
the report would look something like this:

Incident Report Sample fig. 5

Step 6: Close Your Report

Upon completion of the previous sections, you may collect management’s comments on the
incident. For accountability measures, you, as the reporter, and someone from upper
management should sign off. This will validate that the information stated in the incident report
is truthful and unquestionable.

Following the same sample scenario, the incident report will then look like this:

Incident Report Sample fig. 6

Incident Report Letter Sample

The sample incident report below is still based on the walkthrough sample above but in the form
of a letter:

April 16th, 2021

Worksite Compound 1-A

939 Putty Road, Blaxlands Ridge
NSW 2758, Australia

Hi, I am writing a report detailing the forklift incident that happened on the 15th of April, at 6
P.M. Samuel Jeffries, one of the forklift operators was moving crate packaging when the forklift
malfunctioned and bumped towards the other crates. According to the company’s physician, he
obtained a muscle bruise from the impact caused by the forklift bumping into the crates. An x-
ray was also requested to check for underlying injury.

Upon further investigation and based on a note from one of the other employees that witnessed
the incident, this might be a case of not performing a preliminary inspection of the forklift which
lead to affected employee not being able to recognize that the forklift was not functioning
properly.

This is taken into consideration and as a preventive measure, employees will be mandated to
perform regular maintenance checks on equipment and machinery, put an out of order sign for
those in need of maintenance or replacement. Also, have forklift operators perform a pre-start
checklist to ensure that it is in good working condition.

Further details will be submitted if there’s additional information acquired regarding this incident.

James Charleson,

Reporting Staff