Protecting New Workers

New at the job  

If you are new at your job, your risk of injury is much greater than for your more experienced coworkers-. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has reported that 40% of workers injured had been on the job less than one year.  

Why are new workers more likely to be hurt?  

BLS studies show that employees injured at work often lack one vital tool to protect themselves: information. Look at the following data gathered by BLS in various surveys: 

• Of 724 workers hurt while using scaffolds, 27% said they received no information on safety requirements for installing the kind of scaffold on which they were injured. 

• Of 868 workers who suffered head injuries, 71% said they had no instruction concerning hard hats. 

• Of 554 workers hurt while servicing equipment, 61% said they were not informed about lockout procedures.  

In nearly every type of injury, BLS researchers have studied; the same story is repeated repeatedly. Workers often do not receive the safety information they need - even on jobs involving dangerous equipment where training is clearly essential. In one BLS study of workers injured while operating power saws, nearly one of every five said no safety training on the equipment had been provided. 

This problem deserves immediate attention from both the federal and private sectors. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) want to work with workers, employers, and vocational schools to increase protections for new employees. 

Determine if it is a New or Continuing Case

You may occasionally have difficulty determining whether new signs or symptoms are due to a new workplace event or exposure or whether they are the continuation of an existing work-related injury or illness that has already been recorded. This is an important distinction, because a new injury or illness requires you to make a new entry on the OSHA 300 Log, while the continuation of an old recorded case requires, at most, an updating of the original entry.

Consider an injury or illness to be a "new case" if the employee:

• Has not previously experienced a recorded injury or illness of the same type that affects the same part of the body, or

• Previously experienced a recorded injury or illness of the same type that affected the same part of the body but had recovered completely (all signs and symptoms had disappeared) from the previous injury or illness and an event or exposure in the work environment caused the signs or symptoms to reappear.

Recording Chronic Illnesses

The key to recording chronic illnesses is determining whether the conditions will progress even in the absence of workplace exposure or whether those conditions are triggered by events in the workplace.

In occupational illnesses where the signs or symptoms may recur or continue in the absence of an exposure in the workplace, the case must be recorded only once. Examples include occupational cancers, asbestosis, tuberculosis, byssinosis, and silicosis. These conditions are chronic — once the disease is contracted, it may never be cured or completely resolved.

However, when an employee experiences the signs or symptoms of an injury or illness that are the result of an event or exposure in the workplace, such as an episode of occupational asthma or contact dermatitis, you must treat the incident as a new case. It is typical, but not always the case, for individuals with these conditions to be symptom-free if exposure does not occur.

To help you determine if the case is new or recurring, you may, but are not required to, seek the advice of a physician or other licensed healthcare professional (HCP). However, if you do, you must follow the physician or HCP's recommendation about whether the case is a new case or a recurrence. If you receive recommendations from two or more physicians or HCPs, you must decide which recommendation is the best documented, best reasoned, and most authoritative and record the case based on that recommendation.