Slips and trips in health and social care
The health and social care sector is one of the largest employers in the UK and has a large population of vulnerable patients and users of care services.
In the health and social care workplace setting:
- Slips and trips are one of the most common accidents and make up over a third of all major injuries.
- 95% of major slips and trips accidents result in broken bones.
- They can also be the initial cause of other accidents, such as a fall from height.
- In 2009/10 over 1600 workers suffered a major injury because of a slip or trip in the health sector alone. See our statistics page for further information on work-related ill health and injuries in the health and social care sector.
- Most slips occur on wet or contaminated floors, often after cleaning. Most trips are due to poor housekeeping.
Research
- Cleaning activities and slip and trip accidents in NHS Acute Trusts - a scoping study - HSL/2006/80
The objectives of the project were to identify:
- Whether health and safety professionals, housekeeping, supervisory and cleaning staff are aware of the impact of cleaning on slips and trips accidents;
- Factors that impact on the number of accidents;
- How cleaning procedures, techniques and materials are specified and monitored;
- Interventions that could reduce the number of accidents in hospitals.
Tools
- The Slips and Trips eLearning Package (STEP) is an easy way to learn about slips and trips; how they are caused; why preventing them is important; and how to tackle them.. STEP includes quizzes, videos, animations, case studies and interactive sequences to enhance the learning experience
- The Slips assessment tool (SAT) is a free downloadable software package that allows an operator to assess the slip potential of surfaces
