In April last year, three employees at Stockholm University were to carry out a diving assignment at the Baltic Sea Centre. A long day’s work with several dives resulted in decompression sickness for one of the employees, who had to spend half the night in a pressure chamber at Karolinska University Hospital.
During a staff gathering at Lund University in May, an employee fell headfirst on a Segway and got knocked unconscious during a game. After being taken to hospital by ambulance, it was determined that the employee had broken bones in the hand and suffered wounds that required stitches but had avoided more serious head injuries.
The statistics for occupational injuries are divided into four different categories: occupational accidents leading to sick leave, occupational accidents not leading to sick leave, occupational diseases, and commuting accidents on the way to or from work. Last year, 1,038 work-related injuries were reported at the 35 universities from which Universitetsläraren requested figures, an increase from 778 reports in 2021. Half of the work-related injuries did not result in sick leave, and just over a third were categorised as commuting accidents.
The Swedish Work Environment Authority receives approximately 25,000 reports of occupational accidents and incidents each year, an increase of 10,000 in ten years.
“This is not because the number of incidents has increased, we think, but because people are more likely to report them,” says Jan Sandberg, acting section manager at the Swedish Work Environment Authority’s inspection coordination unit.
All personal injuries that occur at work, or on the way to or from work, must be reported to the Swedish Social Insurance Agency according to the law. More serious injuries, such as fractures, severe bleeding or damage to internal organs, must also be reported to the Swedish Work Environment Authority.
“There is no clear boundary for what constitutes a serious accident or near-miss, so we encourage people to report one time too many rather than not enough,” says Jan Sandberg.
When Universitetsläraren reviews the reports to the Swedish Work Environment Authority about the more serious accidents at colleges and universities from last year, most of them involve less spectacular everyday accidents, such as falls on icy campuses, bicycle accidents on the way to work or falls in the stairway, which often lead to broken bones, bruises, minor head injuries and damage to joints and ligaments. More serious cases of car accidents and boat accidents during field work do occur, as do the two aforementioned cases of decompression sickness and the Segway incident.
It is the severity of the injury, not the incident itself, that determines whether or not the incident should be reported. And, as Jan Sandberg points out, a fall in the stairs can lead to a long sick leave.
“It may be a matter of bad luck, but it may also be a matter of that the incident could have been prevented. It could be a cable lying on the floor, a missing banister or slippery floors due to cleaning.”
He says that it is important for employers to report accidents and incidents to the Swedish Work Environment Authority so that it can be investigated. The authority needs to be able to ensure that the employer has a system in place to deal with serious incidents in the workplace and prevent future accidents.
“It is also important at the societal level that we receive these reports, as they provide a picture of deficiencies and risks that we can spread information about.”
This way, industry organisations and unions can work together to address occupational risks, says Jan Sandberg. When it is assessed that an accident or incident needs to be investigated further, such an investigation can either be carried out by the employer, or the Swedish Work Environment Authority can decide to carry out its own inspection. If the authority suspects that deficiencies in the work environment are the cause of a serious injury, the Swedish Work Environment Authority can submit a report to the prosecutor, who can decide to prosecute the employer for work environment offences.
The number of reported occupational diseases at universities last year was 65, but the number of unreported cases is suspected to be high, which Universitetsläraren has written about previously. However, it is occupational diseases that Jan Sandberg prefers to talk about when it comes to universities as employers, as the occupational safety risks are not primarily physical.
“Throughout the welfare sector, including education, we have a lot of work-related mental health issues.”
To address this, employers must work on the organisational and social work environment, says Jan Sandberg. This includes investigating, risk assessing and remedying deficiencies related to workload, prioritisation of tasks, harassment and conflict management.
“That will be very important in order to tackle it.”
