Answer Library / Recordkeeping Easter egg — the citations are real

An employee took an arrow to the knee and was reassigned to desk duty. Recordable?

Quick answer

Yes, almost certainly. An arrow wound involves medical treatment beyond first aid (29 CFR 1904.7(b)(5)), workplace violence carries no exception to work-relatedness (OSHA letter, May 17, 2023), and the reassignment itself is independently recordable as a job transfer (29 CFR 1904.7(b)(4)). The adventuring career is over; the paperwork is just beginning.

A guard suffers an arrow to the knee and spends the rest of his career at a desk telling people about it. Strip the fantasy and you have a textbook compound recordkeeping case: a violent injury, medical treatment, and a permanent reassignment — three separate reasons this lands on the 300 log.

Work-relatedness first. An arrow fired at an employee on duty is workplace violence, and OSHA has addressed this directly: injuries from intentional acts of violence in the work environment are work-related — the exceptions in 1904.5(b)(2) contain nothing for assaults (OSHA letter, May 17, 2023, confirming a violent attack produced a work-related injury). It does not matter that a third party fired the arrow; recordkeeping is no-fault.

Now the criteria, where this case is triply recordable. Removing an arrow and treating the wound is medical treatment beyond first aid (29 CFR 1904.7(b)(5) — the first-aid list goes no further than removing splinters or foreign material by tweezers, irrigation, or other simple means, and extracting an embedded arrow and closing the wound is well past that). Any days recuperating are days away (1904.7(b)(3)). And the career change is its own trigger: when an injury results in the employee being transferred to another job because they can no longer perform their routine functions, the case is recorded as a restricted work/job transfer case (29 CFR 1904.7(b)(4)). Desk duty for a formerly patrolling guard is the definition of a job transfer.

The takeaway hiding in the meme: reassignment is a recording criterion all by itself. Employers routinely miss that a case with zero days away still goes on the log the moment the injured employee is moved to lighter duty. The knee heals; the (b)(4) column is forever.

29 CFR 1904.5(b)(2)29 CFR 1904.7(b)(3)29 CFR 1904.7(b)(4)29 CFR 1904.7(b)(5)
Source: An analysis from the recordkeeping rule (29 CFR 1904.5, 1904.7) plus OSHA's May 17, 2023 letter on workplace violence. Whoever you used to be, the (b)(4) job-transfer column is the real career-ender. Primary reference: read it on osha.gov →

Get answers like this in seconds — with the receipts

Canary AI answers safety & compliance questions from the actual standards and interpretation letters, cites the exact section, and drafts JHAs as clean PDFs. Free during the pilot.

Join the pilot →

Related answers

Is paraffin wax heat treatment considered first aid or medical treatment under OSHA recordkeeping?Recordkeeping · OSHA letter 2024-10-22Are ZipStitch or Clozex wound closure devices first aid or medical treatment under OSHA?Recordkeeping · OSHA letter 2019-10-09Is an EpiPen injection recordable under OSHA?Recordkeeping · OSHA letter 2018-09-13