There has been an almost 30 per cent jump in staff work health safety incidents at Canberra Health Services, but the head of the organisation has sought to paint this in a positive light saying it was reflective of people having greater confidence to report.
Canberra Health Services chief executive Dave Peffer said while the number of reported incidents had risen in recent years the severity of the incidents was less.
He said work to reform workplace culture had given people the confidence to report incidents.
"Despite the number going up, which at face value looks concerning this is a bit of a success story for us in terms of a lot of the work we have been doing around injuries and occupational violence in particular," Mr Peffer said.
"Wherever someone feels dissuaded not to report an incident as it occurs, that obviously means there's no opportunity for us as an organisation to improve and to potentially ensure that injury or incident doesn't happen again.
"What we did see was an increase in reporting rates, which is very, very positive, at the same time, as we saw a decrease in lost time injury frequency rates."
Mr Peffer made the comments in annual report hearings on Monday morning. He was asked about the work health safety figures in the recent Canberra Health Services annual report from opposition committee member James Milligan.
The report showed there was 2555 staff work health safety incidences in 2020-21. This was up from 2116 in 2019-20 and 1972 in 2018-19. It represented an almost 30 per cent jump in two years.
Mr Milligan was sceptical of the success of higher reporting rates, saying the real success would be if there was a lower number of incidents. He asked if there were specific targets around lowering the number.
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Mr Peffer did not say whether there was a target but said it was important to look beyond the numbers and at the qualitative data about what staff were experiencing. However, he did acknowledge the number was too high.
"Those numbers are far too high, they're far too high for what we would like them to be... nevertheless, not withstanding that number going up, we actually see that as a positive in terms of greater levels of recording in the workplace," Mr Peffer said.
An independent review, which was released in March 2019, found there were troubling levels of mistrust and bullying throughout the system. It made a series of recommendations to reform culture.
A review into the implementation of those recommendations, released late last year, found that complaints and inappropriate workplace behaviour had increased at Canberra Health Services in 2020-21.
Mr Peffer put senior staff on notice following that review and in December it emerged that long-standing staff had been let go as part of a crackdown into longstanding poor behaviour.
