The terrible minutes right after an accident can feel pretty chaotic, because you’re dealing with pain, maybe some shock, and now you have decisions to make about what to do next. The problem is that what you do in those first few moments can have a massive impact on everything that follows, such as if you get proper medical care to how your workers’ compensation claim gets handled, and most people have no idea what they should or shouldn’t be doing because workplace accidents aren’t exactly something you plan for.

Your employer might be pushing you to handle things a certain way, coworkers might be giving you advice that sounds helpful but could actually hurt your case later, and you’re probably trying to figure out if you’re hurt badly enough to make a big deal about it or if you should just tough it out and hope everything’s fine. 

Unfortunately, there are some pretty common mistakes that people make right after getting injured at work that can cause an issue. In this post, we hope to help you avoid them:

Don’t Skip Getting Medical Attention Right Away

A common mistake people make is downplaying their injuries or deciding they can wait to see if they feel better in a day or two, which might seem reasonable if you don’t have a major visible injury or you’re not bleeding, but it’s easy for your injuries turn out to be more serious than you initially thought. Maybe you fell and your back hurts, but you figure it’s just soreness that’ll go away, or you cut yourself, but it doesn’t seem deep enough for stitches, so you just clean it up and keep working. 

The problem with this approach is that some injuries don’t show their full extent right away, and if you don’t get medical attention immediately, it becomes much harder to prove that your problems are actually related to the workplace accident or that it was serious enough for you to deserve compensation. Don’t delay at all, if you’re at all worried the issue could be deeper or if you just want to check, head to the emergency room, or at the very least call your non-emergency healthcare number. That’s true even if your boss doesn’t want to be understaffed.

Don’t Give Detailed Statements Without Understanding The Consequences

Right after an accident, your supervisor or someone from HR might want to talk to you about what happened, and while this seems totally normal and reasonable, you want to be careful about giving detailed statements before you’ve had time to really think through what happened, and maybe get some advice about how to handle the situation. Sometimes people are still shaken up or in pain and they end up saying things that accidentally make it sound like the accident was their fault, or they leave out important details about unsafe working conditions that contributed to the experience.

You might try to make others feel better by downplaying it, but if you do that and it’s recorded, that could be used against you. Be sure not to make declarative statements until after you’ve had a full check. Even if you’re perfectly fine and healthy, that doesn’t mean you hadn’t come close to workplace negligence. Speak to a service like Edwards Law Office, P.C. as soon as you can.

Don’t Assume Your Employer Will Handle Everything Properly

Your employer might seem genuinely concerned about your well-being and assure you that they’ll take care of everything; however, trusting that they’ll handle your workers’ compensation claim correctly without you staying involved and informed can be a pretty costly mistake. Companies have their own interests to protect,a nd so sometimes you really do need to give them a nudge from your aforementioned legal help. Even if they say they’re on your side, let them prove it, and nudge them if they won’t.

With this advice, we hope you can avoid many mistakes directly after a work incident.