Defining Serious Injuries on Construction Jobsites: Lessons from the Literature

The primary objective of most safety management programs is to eliminate serious injuries and fatalities. However, serious injury prevention and control efforts are hampered by the lack of consensus amongst safety practitioners on what constitutes a serious injury. Existence of varied definitions, presumptions, and judgment-based assessments stifle the consistency needed for effective communication and shared learning. This paper comprehensively reviews how the healthcare, occupational safety, military, transportation, insurance law, law enforcement, and professional sports industries and trade or regulatory agencies identify, classify, and rationalize the seriousness of an injury. The philosophies, practices, and thresholds identified from the review have been used to propose considerations and recommendations for the construction sector for determining whether an injury is serious or not. This paper proffers recommendations for a new framework on injury severity determination based on the ability to perform Activities of Daily Living (ADLs); this framework is both a worker-centric philosophy and a standardizable practice for the industry at large.

Automated summary

This paper comprehensively reviews the definitions and assessment methods of serious injuries from various industries and organizations, proposing considerations and recommendations for the construction sector. It introduces a new framework based on the ability to perform Activities of Daily Living, which is both worker-centric and can be standardized across the industry.