Part 2:
What is meant by SIF?
SIF stands for ‘Serious Injury and Fatality’. Breaking this definition down is more difficult than you might expect.
Fatality is easily understood, but what is meant by ‘serious’ injury? There have been several attempts to settle a common definition:
The US National Safety Council (via the Campbell Institute) identify a broad definition of ‘serious injury’ to be ‘a life-threatening or life-altering work-related injury or illness’.
This is similar to the American Society for Safety Professionals, which puts forward the LIFE model of defining a serious injury. The LIFE (life-centered injury and fatality evaluation) model recognises a SIF as either ‘life-ending, life-altering or life-threatening’.
Both the NSC and ASSP acknowledge the difficulty in setting an exact definition. For example, the definitions used by some regulatory bodies and research organisations require the compiling of long lists of incidents considered serious, which must be constantly updated.
The US Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) does provide a brief list of reportable instances:
- in which employee is killed on the job or
- suffers a work-related hospitalisation, amputation, or loss of an eye
In the UK, a much more prescriptive approach is taken. The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) sets out exactly what injuries must be reported by employers and offers advice on what to do when the extent of an injury is unclear.
In Canada, there are federal and province-based reporting requirements for what injuries must be reported, a full list of which can be found here.
In Ireland, all workplace fatalities must be reported to the Health and Safety Authority (HSA). Non-fatal workplace accidents must be reported if the employee is unable to return to work for 3 consecutive days post event.
Now that we have looked at some of the discourse surrounding the definition of serious injuries and fatalities and related concepts, we’ll move on to how accident prevention frameworks apply.