Fatality prevention

Given that VTE is often clinically silent and potentially fatal, prevention strategies have the greatest potential to improve patient outcomes.2 To rely on the early diagnosis and treatment of VTE is unacceptable because many patients will die before treatment can be initiated. Furthermore, even clinically silent disease is associated with long-term morbidity from the postthrombotic syndrome and predisposes the patient to future thromboembolic events. Despite an immense body of literature that overwhelmingly supports the widespread use of... 

Clinical deficiency disease, with clear anatomical and functional lesions, and severe metabolic disturbances, possibly proving fatal. Prevention of deficiency disease is a minimal goal in determining requirements and is the criterion of the WHO basal requirement (WHO, 1996). 

In a news release concerning a grant made by Alcoa to the Foundation for Indiana University of Pennsylvania (lUP) to support a national forum on fatality prevention in the workplace, Dr. Lon Ferguson, chair of the lUP Safety Sciences Department, is quoted as saying, The reliance on traditional approaches to fatality prevention has not always proven effective. I extend Ferguson s statement to include serious injury prevention. 

One could argue that superior OSHA incident rates are not absolutely indicative as performance measures, and they are not. Some of those companies with superior OSHA statistical records are faced with the dilemma of having occasional serious injuries and fatalities. That subject is discussed in Chapter 8, Improving Serious Injury and Fatality Prevention. ... 

This chapter proposes that major and somewhat shocking innovations in the content and focus of occupational risk management systems will be necessary to achieve additional progress in serious injury and fatality prevention. Comments are made in this chapter on ... 

Results achieved in recent years from attempts to reduce serious injuries and fatalities cannot be considered stellar. In 2007, a national forum on Fatality Prevention in the Workplace was sponsored by Indiana University of Pennsylvania in cooperation with the Alcoa Foundation. Attendance was great and the speakers provided good information, a large part of which suggested tweaking elements in existing occupational risk management systems. 

In a 2007 press release announcing the Alcoa Foundation grant to the Foundation for Indiana University to support a national forum on fatality prevention. Dr. Lon Ferguson said ... 

Reliance on traditional approaches to fatality prevention has not always proven effective. This fact has been demonstrated by many companies, including some thought of as top performers in safety and health, as they continue to experience fatalities while at the same time achieving benchmark performance in reducing less-serious injuries and illnesses. 

Ferguson s statement still applies. This author emphasizes Reliance on traditional approaches to fatality prevention has not always proven effective. Companies with outstanding records showing reductions on less serious injuries may not have had similar reductions for serious injuries and fatalities. At ORC Worldwide (Now Mercer HSE Networks), about 40 companies are presently involved in an additional study to determine what can be done to reduce occupational fatalities. 

IMPROVING SERIOUS INJURY AND FATALITY PREVENTION Table 8.6 Differences in Fatality Categories... 

Getting Management Interest in Fatality Prevention For this discussion, the manufacturing industry was selected to illustrate the narrow range within which its fatality rates fall, the probability that an organization may or may not have a fatality, and an approach to be taken to achieve an interest in the subject. 

If interest is to be obtained in fatality prevention in the organizations that have not had a fatality or have had very few over a period of many years, an approach that may be successful would be to focus on the fatality potential as evidenced in the data on ... 

To achieve the necessary focus on serious injury and fatality prevention, the enormity of the culture changes needed must be recognized as well as how deeply some deterring premises are embedded in many companies. A list follows of innovations to be considered. Other safety professionals may want to revise the list. 

Importantly, a culture change will also be needed to add a focus on serious injury and fatality prevention within the safety management system while not diminishing efforts to reduce not-so-serious injuries. 

Data should be developed that links serious injury and fatality prevention to the need for the installation of new systems or the improvement in existing systems with respect to ... 

Ferguson, Lon. Indiana University of Pennsylvania, News Release on Forum on Fatality Prevention in the Workplace, 2007. 

Chapter 8— Improving Serious Injury and Fatality Prevention — should be considered a primary resource for both situations as in item 1 and any situation in between. 

In Chapter 8, Improving Serious Injury and Fatality Prevention, this author wrote that risk assessments should be established as the core of an occupational risk management system. So, also, should risk assessment be a major element in a systemic causation model. 

A few prominent writers would have you believe that behavior modification, training, and leadership (consisting largely of what is referred to in OSHA literature as administrative controls) are almost the entirety of the practice of safety. But, events of the recent past indicate that several of the big hitters in behavior-based safety have revised their positions and now talk and write about taking a systems approach to safety management (see Chapter 8, Improving Serious Injury and Fatality Prevention ). 

Chapter 8 on improving serious injury and fatality prevention... 

A Systemic Sociotechnical Model for an Operational Risk Management System is provided in the chapter on Improving Serious Injury and Fatality Prevention. Some will consider it radical. 

It should be noted that these values seem to be rather low. Each fatality prevented on British roads represents an approximate overall saving of 1,3 m and each serious injury prevented represents a saving of 150,000 (Farmer 2004). These analyses are based on economic as well as social and environmental factors including loss of earnings, costs of hospital treatment and other social costs. The value of preventing the road traffic accident may be estimated on the basis of cost-benefit analysis, see e.g. recently revised ISO/CD 2394 (2014). 

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