Levels of safety culture perceptions

Figure 8.2a Item Characteristic Curves (ICCs) fitted to a group with low levels of safety culture perceptions...

Comparing the ICCs for both items shows that the response options of the HSOPSC item in Figure 8.3a are sensitive (a > 1.35) and will discriminate between individuals with different levels of safety culture perceptions, except for those who choose Strongly Disagree versus Disagree because the estimated difficulty parameter is located below -3 standard deviations. In contrast, the response options of the HSOPSC item in Figure 8.3b are not sensitive (a < 1.35). 

There was no explicit assessment of safety culture, in combination with a quantitative evaluation of the HSE environment in the accident reports. Such an assessment could be used to get a collective measure or temperarnre of the priority of safety in the organization, related to best practice . In Itho (2004) there is shown a correlation between the level of safety culture and quantitative incidents/acddents thus safety culture could be used as an indicator of the holes in harriers or the level of erosion of barriers, in combination with quantitative HSE data. A more specific measure tan culture is described by Rundmo (1997) i.e. when an employee in the Norwegian oil and gas industry feels at risk he/she is at risk. A proactive indicator could thus be a workplace survey, measuring risk perceptions or performing a more broadly based assessment of safety culture in combination with other local quantitative indicators such as gas emissions, injuries compared with best practice in the industry. 

A third fundamental of IRT is related to invariance, which has two implications. Firstly, the person parameter G (cf Table 8.1) can be estimated from responses by an individual to any set of items with known item characteristic curves (Reise et al. 2005). Secondly, the estimated item slope and location parameters are independent of the sample under study (Reise et al. 2005). This invariance is displayed below, where individuals with low levels (Figure 8.2a) and with high levels (Figure 8.2b) of safety culture perceptions responded to the same item. 

Clearly, there is a need to measure sources of variation in safety culture perceptions relating to individual and hospital characteristics within hospitals, in order to implement targeted interventions (Jackson et al. 2010). For instance, it is hypothesised that members with the same educational background share a common set of cultural features. In addition, hospitals comprise many different types of wards and units, with a high diversity in offered services, patient populations, organisational stractures and protocols, which might explain variability inpatient safety culture perceptions. So it can be assumed that safety culture is associated with specific professions and with the levels of complexity and intrinsic hazards associated with healthcare delivered in different work areas (Singer et al. 2009). 

Measurement of safety culture—It is critical that organizations have reliable and valid ways in which to measure their safety culture if they are to develop and sustain it appropriately. Organizations need to continuously know and undmtand the current status of their safety culture. This involves the continuous assessment of their safety culture, which typically involves assessing the safety-related attitudes and perceptions of their workers at all levels of the organization. 

Assume that management responded favorably to a suggestion made by a safety professional that an internally conducted survey of the organization s safety culture would be beneficial. The purpose would be to gather the perceptions of all levels of employment on the quality of the safety management system in place. It should be understood that for those who participate in the exercise, their perceptions are their reality. The result of such an exercise wiil be a culture survey. 

The process to assess the safety culture is to determine the collective attitudes (perception) about safety. (Safety perception surveys are discussed in Chapter 17.) Confidential interviews are conducted with all levels of employees and management (see the discussion of independent reviews in Chapter 17). A strategic action plan model is developed where a new course is charted for instilling safety into the organization. The point is to design a new culture that is consistent with management and employees perception of the safety objectives [3]. 

As discussed in Chapter 1, The Perception of Safety , your organizational culture must provide the appropriate level of support to the safety management system in order to have a successful safety culture that wiU stand the test of time. 

Involve employees at all levels. Involving all employees is key, not only for improving the safety culture but also for improving workers perceptions and attitudes toward safety and safety measures. It is therefore recommended that employees at all levels of the organization should be actively encouraged to become involved with safety-related endeavors. 

With that said we have seen a growing number of scientific studies on safety culture, which aimed to characterize the concept and to define the dimensions that allow the evaluation. In this context, we emphasize the study of Femandez-Muniz, Montes-Peon and V quez-Oidas (2007). This study based on key publications on safety culture and an integrative perspective defined the concept as a set of values, perceptions, attitudes and behavioural patterns related to security and shared by members of an organization. In this conceptualization it is also integrated a set of policies and practices relating to the management of exposure to occupational hazards, implemented at each level of organization procedures. 

The impact of an intervention can be measured by comparing perception surveys given before and after implementation. At one plant, our baseline Safety Culture Survey indicated that secretaries had below-average levels of perceived empowerment, as assessed by the measures of self-efficacy, personal control, and learned optimism described earlier in Chapter 15. A special recognition intervention was devised and later the survey was administered again to measure changes in the five actively caring person states as well as safety perceptions and attitudes. 

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