Can I claim nurse slip injury compensation for ankle ligament damage due to a fall on a wet vinyl floor in a hospital? My manager said that the floor was being cleaned and I should have seen the cleaners and taken action to avoid the wet floor.
Eoin P. Campbell, LL.B., Solicitor
Editor in Chief
Unfortunately it is not possible to confirm whether you are eligible to claim nurse slip injury compensation without further information about the circumstances which led to you slipping and falling on the wet vinyl floor. For confirmation of your eligibility to claim nurse slip injury compensation you should speak with a personal injury solicitor for advice. After listening to your account of the accident, a personal injury solicitor will advise you whether nurse slip injury compensation can be claimed for the ankle ligament damage you sustained.
Usually floor cleaning should take place at a time when it causes minimal disruption from a purely practical perspective; however there are also safety concerns about allowing routine cleaning and floor mopping to take place during the day or at busy times in the hospital. If cleaners are mopping a vinyl floor, it is likely that a slip hazard is actually being created. Your employer could be deemed to be negligent for allowing the floor to be mopped at a time when it represented a high risk of slipping due to the number of people in the building. An employer is legally bound to make sure the workplace is safe at all times, and failure to do so would enable you to make a nurse slip injury compensation claim if you sustained an injury as a direct result.
If the floor was left wet and there was no dry mopping of the floor afterwards to remove the risk of slipping, warning signs should have been placed over the wet section to alert staff and patients that extra care should be taken. A failure to place warning signs over a hazard is a further example of negligence and would confirm your eligibility to make a claim for nurse slip injury compensation.
It would be beneficial to your nurse slip injury compensation claim if witness statements could be taken, either of your slip and fall or by anyone who saw that the floor was wet when they came to your aid. If other members of staff are able to testify that the floor was slippery and no warning signs were in place, this would help to prove that your employer had been negligent and would support your claim for nurse slip injury compensation.
Your manager may have initially claimed that you should have seen the hazard; however this does not mean that liability would not be accepted or that the nurse slip injury claim will be contested. Most employers may not want the repercussions of higher insurance premiums from having a nurse slip injury compensation claim made against them, but would not deny a nurse from receiving compensation for an injury which was a direct result of health and safety failures in the workplace.