Slip and Fall

Slip and Fall accidents are the second leading cause of accidental death. The only greater cause of death is automobile accidents. Once we reach a certain age group (I think it is 60's) slip and fall accidents do become the leading cause of death in the United States.

Several industries are finding that slip and fall accidents have become very expensive to them. A study that was done several years ago studied a number of restaurants and found that 43% of all the worker compensation dollars that were spent, were in fact slip and fall accidents. By eliminating these slip and fall accidents the restaurants have had a drastic effect on their cost of Workmen’s Compensation Insurance.

I have seen identical restaurants where one is paying as much as three times the Worker's Compensation Insurance Premium as the other. Again, the main reason for that is slip and fall accidents. Not only are 43% of the dollars attributed to the fact that someone has had a slip and fall accident but also other things that are not included in the category are burns, cuts and other injuries that could be attributed to the fact that someone has slipped. If someone slips with a knife in their hand and they end up cutting themselves or someone else, those may get classified as a “cut” accident when actually it was the slip that caused the problem. Another case is when someone with a hot pot of soup slips and gets burned. This gets classified as a burn when in reality it was a slipping accident that caused the injury. Quite often someone who slips will grab a counter or something else to break their fall. In doing this they could cause a back or arm injury. When you put all of this together, the total cost of accidents is way in excess of 50% of Workman’s Compensation dollars that are paid out by the restaurant industy.

Now that same thing holds true in any commercial kitchen. That kitchen could be in a nursing home,office building, a hospital or a school. The main problem in a restaurant or commercial kitchen is the maintenance of the floors. Most of the time it is the lowest paid worker who cleans the floor at the end of the day. That worker is often anxious to get on to whatever he does when he gets off of work. He is not interested in cleaning the floor so he will throw some cleaner on the floor, throw some water on it, squeegee it off and walk away.

I have often found floors that are extremely slippery at the beginning of the day before the cooking has even started. It is imperative that kitchen floors are cleaned properly. This is critical to maintaining slip resistant floors.

To learn more about methods of cleaning any commercial kitchen floor or restaurant floor... go to Cleaning a Restaurant Kitchen Floor