Establishing an Injury/Illness Monitoring/Tracking System

The tool should include essential information such as:

• The date and time injury/illness occurred;
• The specific location (outdoors, indoors, room, area of the room);
• Child/children involved;
• Teacher(s) present;
• Description of the injury/illness;
• Identification of possible contributing factors;
• Preventive action to be taken;
• Corrective action to be taken; and
• Preventive/corrective action plan completion dates.

Areas to consider:

• Are there reasons why you would/would not want the same person who is responsible for completing an incident report to record the incident on the tracking log?
• Should incident reports be submitted by the direct care staff and then recorded on the tracking log by a supervisor or director?
• Will entries on the tracking log be based on written reports or verbal interviews with the person(s) involved?
• Some facilities develop a specific staff person to track and monitor and serve as the program expert on illness and injury. This person reports and facilitates problem solving at staff meetings or other times as needed and helps to make sure that everyone does their part to keep the program safe and help control the spread of illness.

Areas to consider:

• How frequent do injuries and illnesses occur?
• If the frequency is high, you may want to review the tracking log more frequently; i.e. once a week until the number of incidents drops significantly and remains at a low or non-existent level.
• If the frequency of incidents is low, then a once a month review might be sufficient.

Area to consider:

• Does the direct care staff have the necessary skills/knowledge to independently develop action plans to address concerns? If not, it is recommended that a supervisor facilitate the action planning process with the direct service staff actively involved. Either way, the action plan should be submitted to a supervisor for final approval.

Action plans should include:

• Date of development;
• Details of the area in need of improvement;
• Details of action plan;
• Person(s) responsible;
• Target date; and
• Completion date.

Everyone is responsible for health and safety of the children. In many situations, immediate steps need to be taken and recorded.

Upon completion of steps 1 thru 6, Supervisor, Director or Administrator should meet with staff to discuss the injury/illness tracking system. The discussion should include rationale for the system (why is it important), introduction to the tools, review of roles and responsibilities and an opportunity for staff input, questions, etc.

(NOTE: You may identify persons responsible for each step by name, or you might simply identify them by title; i.e. The Lead Teacher in each classroom will be responsible for…)