This new study focuses on unforeseen events experienced by the students during their traineeships.

The unforeseen events could be either totally new events or familiar ones whose occurrence is unpredictable. This kind of event disrupts the normal working day of a trainee and under certain circumstances may result in an incident or even a workplace accident. An unforeseen event can be intrinsically a health and safety risk for a trainee, for example, a trainee dishwasher in a restaurant who injured his hand when he broke a glass he was washing. Variations in the trainee’s activity caused by the unforeseen event also cause risks.

To deal with unforeseen events, trainees must implement strategies that may be more or less adapted to the situation, depending on their experience.

This study identifies and categorizes the types of unforeseen events that occur, their immediate causes, the strategies observed to deal with them (both individual and collective), and documents the consequences on the work activity, such as loss of time and risk of injury.