Health and safety survey of expeditions

Health and safety survey of expeditions 

Since 1995, the Society's Expedition Medicine Advisory Group (Medical Cell) has collected data about medical incidents on expeditions to help improve the effectiveness of their work and assist future expeditions to better prepare for their journeys.

The data for the years 1995-97 was published by Sarah Anderson and Chris J H Johnson in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine as a paper: Expedition health and safety: a risk assessment (JRSM November 2000, vol 93, pp 557-561). The paper describes the risks of participating in an expedition. 

A more general interpretation of the data for the years 1995-2000 to help expeditions with their risk management strategies can be downloaded as a .pdf.

It is hoped to repeat these surveys in future. All expeditions are encouraged to register your expeditions and fieldwork plans so that others can learn from your experiences. Details of any near-miss incidents are also very useful in helping avoid similar accidents, please alert us to these using the Near Miss Data form.