What makes an injury OSHA recordable instead of first-aid-only?

The test is whether treatment goes beyond first aid. OSHA’s recordkeeping rule (29 CFR 1904) lists the triggers: death, days away from work, restricted work or job transfer, medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness, or a significant injury or illness diagnosed by a physician. A sprain treated with an ice pack and a day of rest is first aid and not recordable. The same sprain treated with a prescription-strength medication or a restriction from normal duties crosses into recordable territory. The distinction is deliberately about the medical response, not how severe the worker felt the injury was, which is why two similar-looking injuries can land on opposite sides of the line depending on how they were treated.

Does a recordable incident mean the company did something wrong?

No. Recordability is a classification of the medical outcome, not a finding of fault or a safety violation. A contractor can run a disciplined program, follow every procedure, and still have a worker slip on ice and sprain an ankle badly enough to need a day away from work, which is recordable regardless of how well the hazard was managed. Confusing recordable with avoidable or the company’s fault creates pressure to under-report, which only hides the data a safety program needs to find and fix hazards. The count exists so leading indicators and corrective actions have something real to respond to, not to assign blame.

How does one recordable incident feed TRIR, DART, and LTIR?

Every recordable incident adds one to the numerator of TRIR regardless of its type. Whether it also counts toward DART or LTIR depends on how it was classified on the 300 log. A recordable case that only required medical treatment beyond first aid, with no day away and no restriction, raises TRIR alone. A case with a restriction or job transfer raises both TRIR and DART. A case with a day away from work raises TRIR, DART, and LTIR together, since a lost-time case is always also a DART case and always a recordable case. The hierarchy is nested: LTIR cases are a subset of DART cases, which are a subset of all recordables.

Construction Glossary · Safety

OSHARecordable Incident

One classification decides whether an injury is a footnote or a number that follows the project for the rest of the year.

Definition

A work-related injury or illness beyond first aid, death, days away, restricted work or transfer, medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness, or a significant diagnosis, that OSHA requires on the 300 log. It is the single count every safety rate, TRIR, DART, and LTIR, is built from.

How one injury gets sorted

Every injury answers one question first: did treatment go beyond first aid? No falls out of the count entirely. Yes lands on the 300 log and sorts further, by medical treatment, restriction, days away, or fatality, into the rates it feeds.

The four ways in

A case only needs to clear one trigger to be recordable, but which trigger it clears decides how far its effect reaches.

Category	What qualifies	Rates it feeds
Medical treatment beyond first aid	Treatment past the OSHA first-aid list, e.g. prescription medication or stitches	TRIR
Restricted work or job transfer	Worker kept off normal duties or moved to another job	TRIR, DART
Days away from work	Worker misses at least one full scheduled day	TRIR, DART, LTIR
Fatality	Work-related death	TRIR, DART, LTIR

The same incident count sits behind TRIR, DART, and LTIR, which is why getting the classification right once matters more than recalculating rates later.

How POD handles recordable counts

POD reads the recordable incident count from your safety records and daily reports and shows it on the safety tab alongside first-aid and lost-time counts, gated to what you report, with a placeholder when it is absent. POD does not decide whether a case is recordable; that classification against OSHA’s rules is yours.

OSHA 300 log requirements guide

Frequently asked questions

One count, four rates

Once a case is recordable, it becomes the numerator in a rate. The one every bid and insurer watches first is TRIR.

TRIR Back to the Glossary

Related terms

OSHA Recordkeeping TRIR DART LTIR