How to Complete an Accident Report Form

It is good practice to complete a workplace accident report form.

In the event of a workplace accident, you may need to record the incident. The accident report form covers the workers involved as well as the company should any repercussions occur. It also helps to track trends in occupational injury so you can then rectify them.

Filling in the Accident Report Form

Please take a look below at our step by step guide on how to complete an accident report form.

What information do you need to include in an accident report?

Contact Details

You will first need the injured party’s details; you need to collect as much as possible just if you may need it. Then you will need the casualties first and last name, telephone number, email address, home address, gender and date of birth. Then you need some details on why they were at the location and if they were an employee or a member of the public. Once the injured party has filled in their details, the person filling in the form will need to add their contact details to the record.

Accident and Injury Details

Next, you will need to gather some information on the accident itself and the damage it has caused; take down the date of the accident, the time and the location (try to be as specific as possible, e.g. which area of department or floor was the person on?).

All the details of the injury will then need recording; this could help make sure that you give the injured party the proper treatment if you gather enough information:

• Type of injury suffered – laceration, burn, bruising, fracture?
• What part of the body was injured?
• Did the casualty require resuscitation or hospitalisation?
• Did the casualty ever become unconscious?
• How many days of work did the employee lose due to the injury?
• Did an ambulance have to take the casualty from the scene?

Supporting Evidence

If a witness was on the scene, take their details and see if they will provide a written statement to support your cause. Other information such as photographs, CCTV footage, and Health and Safety Checks records are also valuable pieces of information.

Recording the Accident

Then you will need to go through the event of the accident; you will need to ask yourself these questions to portray the scene properly:

• How did the injury occur?
• Was there anything different about the working conditions?
• Was the injured party wearing any PPE?
• What work task was being conducted at the time of the accident, and was any equipment used?
• Explain the events that led up to the accident?

Preventing the Accident

The primary purpose of an accident report is to help prevent any future accidents, so the reason for the accident is a significant factor. The accident may have come from poor or lack of training, human error or faulty equipment. If you find the reason for the accident, you can prevent similar accidents in the future by providing training or introducing new procedures.

If you’d like to learn more about filling in an accident report form, you may want to attend a First Aid training course? For our upcoming course dates, take a look here.

When is an incident reportable to RIDDOR?

Take a look at some advice on reporting an accident at work needs to RIDDOR here.