First aid compliance just got much easier for the film industry.
The First Aid Assessment Tool is now available online from ActSafe, the safety association serving BC’s motion picture and performing arts industry. It helps employers to book the right staff and equipment required by Part 3.14 of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation.
“Once you have the information you need, completing a first aid assessment takes less than one minute with ActSafe’s online assessment tool,” reads the ActSafe website.
All employers in BC must determine first aid needed by looking at these factors in a workplace:
(a) the number of workers who may require first aid at any time,
(b) the nature and extent of the risks and hazards in the workplace, including whether or not the workplace as a whole creates a low, moderate or high risk of injury,
(c) the types of injuries likely to occur,
(d) any barriers to first aid being provided to an injured worker, and
(e) the time that may be required to obtain transportation and to transport an injured worker to medical treatment.
An employer must reassess the workplace “whenever a significant change affecting the assessment occurs in the employer’s operations” – which happens all the time in the film industry.
“It’s a constantly changing workplace,” says Geoff Teoli, ActSafe’s executive director, explaining (when I asked) that a film set could be in a remote forest, an abandoned building, a downtown alley, or many other places.
During the shoot, there will likely be more people working on set than there are during the set up and wrap, which also changes requirements.
In the past, this process required “deciphering tables, equipment lists and calculating hazard adjustment ratios to figure out your first aid requirements,” reads the ActSafe website.
But not anymore.
“The tables and calculations were just intimidating for most of the workers,” Geoff said. “This gives them really a nice simple tool. It takes less than a minute to do and they get everything from inventory list to hazard assessment.”
Congrats to ActSafe and thanks to Geoff for talking with me about it.
