Is This Electric Shock Case Recordable?

A Safety.BLR.com^® subscriber recently asked our experts if an employee’s electric shock experience was recordable on the OSHA 300 log. Read on to see the specifics of the incident and what the experts had to say.

Question: An employee received an electric shock. He saw his doctor and his doctor took him out of work for two days. The employee also saw the company doctor a day later. There were no prescriptions, injections, or restrictions. The employee was not paid for this time because of the seven day waiting period in Virginia before a claim is considered a lost time. Is this required to be entered on the OSHA 300 log as lost time?

Answer: Yes, this case would need to be recorded on the OSHA 300 log as a lost-time incident. A case in which a physician or other licensed health care professional recommends that an employee takes one or more days away from work must always be recorded, regardless of the ultimate severity of the injury or illness.

If the employee had seen the company doctor before taking time away from work and the company doctor had given an opinion that time away from work was not necessary, then, as an employer, you would have been able to decide which medical recommendation (the employee’s doctor or the company doctor) was more authoritative and base the course of action on that recommendation. However, once the employee followed the advice of the first physician and took the days away from work as recommended, the case became recordable, and a subsequent medical opinion cannot change that outcome.

Whenever an employee is away from work due to a work-related injury for one or more days following the day that the injury was incurred, it must be recorded on the OSHA 300 log with a check mark in the space for cases involving days away and an entry of the number of calendar days away from work in the ‘number of days’ column.

The waiting period in Virginia for workers’ compensation claims is not a relevant consideration for injury and illness recordkeeping purposes.

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