If you have a job working with patients of any kind, you are probably well aware of what an incident report is and why you often have to fill them out. You can’t control events, and you certainly can’t control what will happen next. The future is unknown and you never know what the next minute will bring. You can do everything you can to protect and care for those in your charge, but you can’t know nothing will go wrong.
When you work with people, the unknown should be expected. People fall, people fight, and people do crazy things sometimes. When someone gets hurt or something out of the ordinary happens, you must fill out an incident report. This report will detail everything that happened, who did what, and what the result may be. The incident report must be filed fast, and can be referred to when there are questions and concerns about what happened. In the event that someone gets seriously hurt, there may be legal questions and you want to make sure you have your side of the story covered. The law might even get involved, so make sure you are thorough and honest.
I am familiar with the incident report because I have had to fill many out, though I have not seen one in a long time. I worked at a facility for mental disable adults and there were many things that went wrong. Mostly, it would be a fall that could not be avoided, but on occasion someone would hit someone, and once I had to fill out an incident report because one of the clients bit the other one. There were also times when perhaps someone hurt himself or herself, or they may have hurt one of my fellow employees. It was all part of the job, but it was also something that had to be written down for reference incase it was needed.
I soon learned that filling out an incident report with the most detail as possible is the best way to go. You can’t be vague. Even if you think something is irrelevant it should still be included. To someone else, it might indeed be something important. The incident report is often needed for your own protection as well as the protection of your employees. No one likes when something goes wrong, but it’s unavoidable. Just like with everything else in life, it is in the best interest of everyone to get it down in writing.
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