Systems Thinking Incident Review (STIR) app

About the STIR app

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) developed the STIR app. The app is designed for employers in the healthcare and social assistance industry.

The app is a free toolkit that uses a systems thinking approach for reviewing workplace incidents. It helps employers to identify actions to make occupational health and safety improvements.

The purpose of incident reviews

Incident reviews can help to prevent future injuries.

This can help meet legal requirements under the:

• Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004
• Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017.

Employers should review and update risk controls when someone reports a workplace injury.

How the STIR app can help

Workplace injuries are often caused by interacting factors across all system levels. Factors can include:

• equipment and surroundings
• actions of front line staff
• administration and governance
• operations management
• government, regulators and external influences.

The app moves away from focusing only on the incident in isolation and considers the impact of systems. This helps employers to undertake more complex analysis to inform sustainable systemic change.

To improve systems thinking incident reporting, the app includes the following tools.

• A standardised process for investigating injuries and generating actions, including online training.
• A data collection guide and prompts to help identify factors contributing to incidents.
• Prompts to help identify corrective actions that will create long-term systemic change.
• Aggregated data from incident reviews to help find trends and opportunities for improvement.
• A dashboard to track the quality of incident reviews.

Take part in the STIR app evaluation trial

WorkSafe has funded QUT to evaluate the STIR app. Employers can join the trial to help evaluate the cultural, safety and financial benefits of the app.

For more information and to join, visit QUT’s trial webpage.

Data Privacy

All information entered in the STIR app is securely stored. Data is de-identified and isn’t shared with WorkSafe.

QUT may use de-identified data for research and educational purposes. QUT manages personal information under with the QUT’s privacy policy and procedure. See the privacy statement in the app for more information about how data is handled and used.