Management safety support needed from

In my book Innovations in Safety Management Addressing Career Knowledge Needs, a chapter is titled Current Developments In Behavioral Safety. Supportive excerpts are taken from that chapter and from my article Perspectives on ASSE S Behavioral Safety Symposium, which appeared in the August 1998 issue of Professional Safety (p. 32). 

A chief executive and his fellow managers can either give minimum commitment to the safety movement or maximum commitment and support. A successful change of safety culture needs both initial and ongoing management support as well as buy-in from the unions and employees. Line management must take the lead and be active participants. 

To better promote a culture of safety, what support will laboratory managers need From whom ... 

The safety and health function is in the unique position of having a product that everyone wants and everyone needs. From the top to the bottom in every organization, virtually every employee at every level will say that safety and health are very important and a priority. However, although employees say safety and health are important to them, the day-to-day activities and the continued resulting work-related injuries and illnesses say otherwise. Management often states that safety and health are priorities, however provides minimal financial and other support. It is our responsibility as safety and health professionals to ingrain and empower each and every employee with the skills and abilities to perform their job in a safe and healthful manner, as well as motivate each employee to take possession of his or her own safety and health, as well as the safety and health of his or her fellow employees, in order to truly achieve the cultural shift necessary within the workplace. 

Control systems will play a key role in future distributed plants ]139,145]. As a rule of thumb, plants will be smaller and simpler, but the control systems will be much more advanced, of a standard not known today. Plant personnel for operation and managing will ultimately no longer be required, except for start-up, shutdown, and services. This is a shift from a regulatory to a servo role, supported by a sophisticated sequence control. Control is needed for safety issues, operability, and product quality control. Sensors have a central role to provide the information needed for control and modeling and simulation is needed for process models. 

Often fire alarm system needs can be accommodated on computer or communication systems installed for other purposes. For example, several companies sell small systems, primarily designed for energy management which are designed to accept inputs from other types of systems such as security and fire safety and they provide software packages to support them. 

This definition goes some way to differentiate patient safety from more general concerns about the quality of healthcare the focus is on the dark side of quality (Vincent, 1997), care that is actually harmful rather than just not of a good standard. Healthcare is, in many cases at least, inherently hazardous and the definition implicitly acknowledges this. The definition also refers to the amelioration of adverse outcomes or injuries, which broadens the definition beyond traditional safety concerns towards an area that would, in many industries, be called disaster management. In healthcare, amelioration firstly refers to the need for rapid medical intervention to deal with the immediate crisis, but also to the need to care for injured patients and to support the staff involved. 

---