Report an incident or hazard
From Tuesday 7 January 2025, the UQSafe mobile reporting app will change from PocketSafety to the new Riskware app. Desktop access remains unchanged. Refer here to learn more about the UQSafe R3 upgrade project.
Reporting and recording incidents and hazards helps us to:
- remedy or isolate hazards to ensure they can’t cause further harm
- prevent future incidents and hazards
- meet our legal obligations.
UQSafe is the system used at UQ to manage incident and hazard reports. Systems Training Guide 'Report a hazard or incident' should assist with navigating UQSafe.
What to report
All health and safety hazards and incidents should be reported in UQSafe. This includes health and safety concerns that may also impact psychological wellbeing. The Health and Safety Incident and Hazard Reporting Procedure outlines the requirements for notifying and reporting health and safety incidents and hazards at UQ, including information and privacy management.
Hazards
Hazards are situations that may cause incidents and injuries if not corrected. You should report hazards that could pose a risk to:
- a person's health or safety
- the environment (including air, water or land).
Incidents, injuries and illnesses
You should report all incidents involving staff, students, contractors and visitors that occur:
- on UQ sites
- while you're undertaking UQ business off site
- while you're completing your normal journey to or from work.
Incidents you should report include:
- injuries
- illnesses
- near misses.
Reporting psychosocial hazards and incidents
All psychosocial hazards and incidents should be reported in UQ Safe. You should also raise concerns with your immediate supervisor or, if this is not possible a Human Resources or Safety representative.
Even if a hazard is an inherent part of the role (for example, exposure to emotionally demanding tasks), it can still be reported in UQSafe. The process of reporting can assist with reviewing existing controls to ensure that are controlled as best as reasonably practicable.
See Psychosocial Risk Management for information on common psychosocial hazards.
Serious and notifiable incidents
There are certain incidents/illnesses and events which are required to be reported under work health and safety laws and electrical safety laws to Workplace Health and Safety Queensland. These types of events include fatalities, serious bodily injury, work-caused illness and dangerous events.
All notifiable incidents must be reviewed by the Director, HSW Division, prior to notification to the regulator.
For serious and notifiable incidents, you should:
- Perform any required emergency action.
- Notifiy the Director, Health Safety and Wellness to report the incident as soon as possible.
What incidents must be notified?
Notifiable incidents
Under work health and safety laws, UQ must notify Workplace Health and Safety Queensland if any of the following happens:
- the death of a person
- a serious injury or illness of a person
- a dangerous incident
- some psychological injuries
Under electrical safety laws, UQ must notify the Electrical Safety Office if any of the following happens:
Refer to the Workplace Health and Safety Queensland website for additional information.
Medical treatment
For a serious injury or illness medical treatment is defined as treatment:
- of an injury/illness to a worker where the injury/illness was sustained as a result of work, study or research for UQ; and
- beyond that defined for first aid from, or under the direction of, a qualified medical practitioner or allied health professional.
In most circumstances “medical treatment” does not include visits to a physician or other registered health professional solely for observation, counselling, diagnostic procedures or first aid. In some cases first aid may be provided by a medical practitioner or other registered health practitioner – first aid that is carried out by these parties does not automatically categorise it as “medical treatment”.
MTIs include:
- Administering or prescription of medication (including antibiotics), as prescribed by a qualified medical practitioner.
- Penetrating wound closing devices (excluding medicinal glue as it is considered first aid treatment).
- Surgical removal of foreign material and surgical debridement.
- Removal of foreign bodies from the eye requiring more than irrigation or cotton swabs to remove them.
- Second- and third-degree burns based on the treatment required and the risk of infection.
- Use of x-ray to diagnose a fracture.
- The use of casts, splints, or other rigid stays to immobilise parts of the body, such as a moon boot.
- Medical removal of a fingernail or toenail.
- Extensive therapeutic treatment, following a written referral from a GP, for allied health treatment (such as psychologist, physiotherapist, chiropractor) involving four or more treatment sessions from a single professional in a continuous period
MTIs exclude:
- Use of non-prescription medication.
- Visits to medical practitioners or a hospital admission solely for consultation, observation or counselling.
- Any diagnostic procedures, such as X-rays and blood tests, or the administration of prescription medications solely for diagnostic or preventative purposes (e.g., eye drops to dilate pupils, tetanus shots, vaccinations or boosters).
- No form of treatment has been provided other than a recommendation for light duties.
Support and counselling services
If you are experiencing any distress after being involved in or exposed to a workplace incident, you are encouraged to seek support. Resources and support available for UQ staff and students include,
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
- Student Counselling Program
- Self-help resources - bullying
- Sexual Misconduct Support Unit (SMSU)
- Mental Health Champions Network
- Discrimination and Harassment Contact Officers.
Supervisors and managers
Supervisors and managers have additional responsibilities for investigating incidents and hazards reported by their staff. When an incident or hazard report is submitted and assigned to a supervisor, they must create an action plan in UQSafe and ensure that corrective measures are identified and implemented to resolve hazards, prevent reoccurrence of incidents, and protect workers' health and safety.
- Instructions on how to create an incident/hazard action plan in UQSafe.
- If you believe you have been incorrectly assigned as the person responsible for creating the action plan in UQSafe, you are able to transfer this responsibility to another person.
Incident and hazard action plans are required to be submitted in UQSafe within 21 days of report submission.
Seek advice from your local safety manager/coordinator if you require assistance with the incident investigation. If infrastructure issues have been identified (e.g. trip hazard) the supervisor or delegate can raise an Archibus job to make P&F aware of the issue. The Archibus job number should be documented in the incident/hazard action plan in UQSafe.
See the Health and Safety Incident and Hazard Reporting Procedure for more information.
Safety coordinators and safety managers
The UQSafe guide for safety coordinators and and safety managers (PDF, 317KB) has instructions for managing incident and hazard reports as a Workplace Health and Safety Coordinator (WHSC), safety manager or safety coordinator.
See the Health and Safety Incident and Hazard Reporting Procedure for more information.
Safety Coordinators and HSW Managers are required to investigate serious incidents and keep records of the investigation in UQSafe system. Refer to Basic Incident Investigation page for guidance on conducting this process in UQSafe and to Health and Safety Incident Investigation Procedure for more information.
Accessing the UQSafe incident reporting system
All UQ staff and students automatically gain access to UQSafe once they have successfully been onboarded. If you have completed your onboarding tasks, but are unable to access UQSafe contact the ITS Service Desk for assistance.
If you have questions about how to use UQSafe, contact your local Work Health and Safety Coordinator (WHSC) or the Health, Safety and Wellness Division.
Incident reports before 1 July 2016
Incidents that occurred before 1 July 2016 were reported in the old UQ Injury, Illness and Incident Reporting System. These reports have been archived for record-keeping purposes. Contact Health, Safety and Wellness if you need access to an archived incident report.
In an emergency:
Contact UQ Security on (07) 3365 3333.
Promote incident reporting via UQSafe
Display UQSafe poster (PNG, 450 KB) on digital screens or place UQSafe poster (vertical) (PNG, 289.3 KB) on noticeboards in your work area.
