How to report an injury or disease

If you cannot complete the online form please call WorkSafe on 1300 307 877

Work related deaths and certain types of injuries and diseases must be reported to WorkSafe. Failure to report could lead to prosecution. Reporting must be done by the relevant employer whenever these occur in connection with their business.

Relevant employers include the self-employed, principal contractors and labour hire agents. In some cases, WorkSafe will require notification of the same reportable death, injury or disease by different ‘relevant employers’. Reporting is also required, in some circumstances, if a worker dies, or suffers an injury or disease at employer provided residential premises (as described under s23G(2) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act).

The types of injuries that must be reported are:

• a fracture of the skull, spine or pelvis;
• a fracture of any bone in the arm (other than in the wrists or hand) or in the leg (other than a bone in the ankle or foot);
• an amputation of an arm, a hand, finger, finger joint, leg, foot, toe or toe joint;
• the loss of sight of an eye; and
• any injury other than the above which, in the opinion of a medical practitioner, is likely to prevent the employee from being able to work within 10 days of the day on which the injury occurred.

Types of diseases that must be reported are:

• infectious diseases: tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, Legionnaires’ disease and HIV, where these diseases are contracted during work involving exposure to human blood products, body secretions, excretions or other material which may be a source of infection; and
• occupational zoonoses: Q fever, anthrax, leptospiroses and brucellosis, where these diseases are contracted during work involving the handling of, or contact with, animals, animal hides, skins, wool, hair, carcases or animal waste products.

Please note:  This text has been extracted from the ‘About WorkSafe, inspectors and notices’ document, updated in August 2013.

Notification forms

• Asbestos health surveillance form 
• Isocyanates health surveillance form 
• Lead surveillance form  
• Notification of test results 
• Organophosphate health surveillance notification

The documents on this list are provided in Adobe Portable Document (PDF) format. Acrobat PDF files require the free Acrobat Reader plug-in, which is available from Adobe.