Learning Experience Reports

If you experienced or observed an incident, an accident, or an 'almost!' situation, please report it here: 

Learning Experience Report Form (requires a University of Minnesota e-mail address) 

Important: 

If someone was injured (even minor cuts or exposures), please be sure a First Report of Injury form has been completed first!  See our Incident Reporting page for more.

What is required:

The submission form is anonymous and only requires a brief description of the incident and the suggested measures that could be taken to solve the problem. Anyone with a UMN account can create a submission.

When to submit:

Please consider submitting an LER if you ever think there is an underlying condition or opportunity to learn. Even submitting a seemingly minor incident is important to develop the practice of sharing potential safety concerns.

“I wish I had known."

...

"Why didn’t anyone tell me?"

…

"If only I had dealt with that problem or followed instructions earlier." 

What Happens to Your Submission:

The anonymous submissions are reviewed and edited by the department safety committees who:

• Review the case description and edit out any identifying, unsupportive, or unnecessary details.

• Discuss why it occurred – What were the causes? (told to, unavailable, rushed, forgot, not maintained, manufacturer defect, etc).

• Review suggested measures to ensure they are appropriate and likely to prevent it from happening again

LERs approved by the safety committees are then communicated to our academic laboratory communities and used to prevent safety issues in the future. About once a month, one of these approved LERs is shared with the departments. Many people assume the incidents they read about have recently occurred in the last week. However, ‘recent’ in LER context is typically sometime within in the last year.