Transcription:
Hi, my name is Heather Long and I am a partner at the law firm of Kimmel, Carter, Roman, Peltz & O'Neill. We have ten attorneys and we are the largest firm in the state of Delaware that focuses solely on personal injury and work injuries. Today, I'd like to talk to you about what to do in the 24 hours after you've been involved in a work injury. Once you are involved in a work injury, the first thing that you want to do is notify your supervisor. You want to tell them how you've become injured and what parts of your body you hurt. Some of the larger companies here in Delaware like Amazon, Purdue or Christiana Care will have their own in-house medical personnel that your supervisor will ask you to go and be evaluated by. You may also be asked to fill out some claim forms. These forms are typically going to be called a "First Report of Injury" or a "Report of Occupational Injury. On these forms, it's important that you very accurately describe how you were injured and list all of your injuries. Failure to list a part of your body that's been injured may result in a future fight on your hands when the workers' compensation carrier doesn't want to pay for treatment for that particular part of your body. The other thing that is very important is you must get the required medical attention. After you see the in-house personnel, I recommend that you go to an outside emergency room or Urgent Care facility and have your injuries checked out by a trained medical doctor. That doctor will give you recommendations on treatment and will also document all of the injuries you tell them as well as the mechanism of injury, or how you became injured. The last thing that you are going to want to do is contact a workers' compensation attorney. Here at Kimmel Carter, we offer free consultations for all of our workers' compensation clients. We can explain the benefits to you and we can handle all of the paperwork, all of the phone calls in dealing with the insurance companies so that you can focus on the most important thing: getting better. If you do have any questions about this, please feel free to call us at 565-6100. If you are viewing this video on Facebook, please list your questions below and we will do our best to respond to you in a timely manner.
