Safety


Mark Eastwood describes the early interventions that could significantly reduce the rehabilitation and time back to work for rail staff involved in incidents of fatality


N


ot all aspects of rail safety are within our control, indeed the most dramatic incidents that can happen are by their very nature uncontrollable, and that includes fatalities.


Statistics show that there is an incident of fatality within the UK rail industry every other day, which places a major strain on both performance and the workforce, with one Toc stating that the average length of for a member of staff involved amounts to 156 days. These incidents are not preventable, so we must expect them and manage the aftermath as a matter of course. But how do we approach the rehabilitation of train crew involved in these incidents without a thorough understanding of the factors involved? Using data collected over many years and the feedback from therapists involved with the rehabilitation of rail staff back to work, Staff Absence Solutions has developed a training course to assist managers in their understanding of rail fatalities and their effects, so that they can use their knowledge and experience to assist the staff involved to recover from their exposure and return to work having made a complete and timely recovery. It goes without saying that each incident involves a unique and individual set of circumstances. However there are a number of areas to consider such as incident awareness; psychological effects; physiological effects; incident investigation, post-incident factors, the rehabilitation process and of course, human factors. All of these will have a dramatic effect on the staff involved and affect their rehabilitation. If every manager involved was afforded a suitable standard of training in all of these areas, they could begin to develop a proactive strategy in the management of an incident and the aftermath. As an example, each incident has a number of phases and each one has its own bearing.


Pre-Incident: this could include factors such as age, experience, training and


competence of the staff involved


Incident: what was unique about the incident? what can the train-crew remember? what was the state of mind of the train crew? were there any outside influences?


Post incident:what are the long and short-term psychological effects on the train crew? are there any obvious physiological effects? how will the internal investigation be addressed? what about an external investigation? what effects will the attendance at Coroner’s Court have after a significant period of time has passed?


Rehabilitation: as each incident is unique, so is each individual employee. How


will they react to the incident and how will they recover without specialist intervention?


It has now been established that even when taking into account that each incident and individual member of staff is unique, there is a general pattern to recovery, which can be treated re- actively initially and pro actively once an employee’s position within the stages of rehabilitation has been identified. From a therapy perspective, this is a fluid approach, where the employee is assessed at all stages of their recovery and treatment is tailored to ensure efficacy throughout the programme.


The management of the employee by their employer/line manager and external agencies such as the British Transport or


November 2013 Page 51


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