Reporting Illness/Injury/Incident
Illness/Injury
Employees who are hurt or made ill by their work or conditions in their workplace, while in pay status, are required to complete and submit a "First Report of Injury/Illness" (FROI) and a Chemistry Department Incident Report as soon as possible. Even if the injury is not very serious, even if it's not completely certain that an illness has been caused by the workplace. Payment of your medical expenses might be delayed if you do not get the Worker's Compensation claim into the system promptly. The incident report rt or made il
Graduate and undergraduate students registered for research for credit (e.g. 197, 499, 599, 699) who are hurt or made ill by their research work or conditions in their research area are required to complete and submit a Chemistry Department Incident Report as soon as possible. Even if the injury is not very serious, even if it's not completely certain that an illness has been caused by the research area. Medical expenses are *not* covered by Workers' Compensation if you are not an employee or were not in pay status when then injury/illness occurred.
Failure to report quickly can result in disciplinary action, legal liability, and/or cause difficulty in paying medical charges if any such charges have been or will be incurred.
FROI (PDF): REM website location of First Report of Injury or Illness.
Incident Report: Department of Chemistry form, Word 2003 compatible, complete, save, attach to email to submit.
First Aid Kits
- First aid kits are not required (by OSHA or any other regulations) in areas that have 5 min medical response, which Purdue has in all locations except some remote farms and research stations out of town.
- Any first aid kits provided to the employees in a workplace MUST abide by a regulatory requirement that an inventory be kept of what is in the kit, and that the kit ALWAYS contain exactly what the inventory says it does. If the inventory says five band-aids, there must be five band-aids at all times, for example. It must be checked regularly and the checks logged on a log sheet -- weekly is what they do in the Purdue Power Plant, and daily is suggested for the very public areas such as the hallway first aid kits in the BRWN and WTHR buildings. It's OK to have antibiotic ointment but if it (or anything else) has an expiration date on the container, they must never be allowed to stay in the kit beyond that date.
Given these conditions it should be fairly obvious WHY the official position of Purdue and REM is that first aid kits are not recommended in any areas having 5 min emergency medical response. But keep in mind that "we don't recommend it" is not the same as "we recommend that you not have them," logically as well as legally, and if a work area has a first aid kit and is keeping it carefully as per the requirements, no requirement to remove it will be issued.
One other important consideration is that aspirin, tylenol, ibuprofen.... even though they are over-the-counter, have been regarded in the courts as "medication" and that no one but a licensed medical care provider is allowed to administer any sort of medication to an employee. For this reason, most workplaces do not allow aspirin et. al. to be kept in a first aid kit, or they made a big point of putting a printed caution reminding that nobody is to give aspirin to anyone else... . (it can only be self-administered).
Graduate Student Accident Insurance (GSAI)
See Graduate Student Employment Manual (PDF) section on Graduate Student Accident Insurance.
The University provides, at its expense, an Accident Insurance Plan for all graduate students on the West Lafayette Campus. The coverage provides accidental death, dismemberment, disability income, and medical expense for those hazards to which an insured person may be exposed while engaged in class work, research, course-related activities, or in approved field work or travel for University activities related to research or coursework. Coverage is not provided in the place of residence or while commuting to and from normal on-campus instructional or research locations. Coverage in aircraft is restricted, and coverage does not apply if the insured is acting in the capacity of an employee. The latter would be covered under the Worker's Compensation program.
This GSAI is quite important because a the grad student who is injured while not in pay status (e.g. hurt while doing research but is not paid for doing research) is not covered by Workers' Compensation or the University's Occupational Medical fund. The GSAI picks up the tab in much the same way that Workers' Comp would if the injury were to have occurred "on the job.".
GSAI is not the same as "Graduate Staff Medical Insurance," which is paid for by the graduate staff unless they opt out. See http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~pgsg/files/projects/gradtips.pdf section on health insurance.