Operational risk management safety performance

In Chapter 25, Measurement of Safety Performance, it is said that precise and certain measures of safety, health, and environmental performance are difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, audits can be highly effective measures of the quality of operational risk management in place if they are well conceived and well done. It is suggested that the observation made by Kase and Wiese (1990) concerning the purpose of a safety audit be kept in mind ... 

Section 3.8.2 System/Cost Effectiveness Analyses. Describes the implementation of system and cost effectiveness analyses to support the development of fife cycle balanced products and processes and to support risk management. Describes the MOEs, how they interrelate, and criteria for the selection of measures of performance (MOPs) to support the evolving definition and verification of the system. Includes description of the overall approach for system/cost-effectiveness analysis as well as manufacturing analysis verification analysis distribution analysis operational analysis hiunan engineering, manpower, personnel, and training analysis usability analysis supportability analysis safety, health hazards, and environmental analysis and life cycle cost analysis. Describes how analytical results will be integrated. 

In everyday life, while we usually trust people who work for us to perform professionally and do their jobs, we also check that those job tasks are done correctly and to our satisfaction. That s what audits are about, only in a more formal manner. This chapter discusses the Process Safety Management (PSM)/Risk Management Program (RMP) requirement (U.S. Department of Labor 1992 U.S. EPA 1996) to perform audits of covered processes to ensure that they are adequately operating. After the basics are defined, after requirements are understood, and after the PSM/RMP system has been developed, it is time to perform internal reviews and prepare for external reviews. 

Safety and risk management research in healthcare has adopted as its dominant trend the systems oriented approach, modelled largely on previous research in safely critical industries such as aviation and nuclear power. The systems view entails that the focus is not primarily on the mechanisms of individual human error but on the factors that shape human performance (Rasmussen 1986 Reason 1993,1997). In an organisational context, such factors are, of course, those that are within the control of the organisation. For instance, it has been suggested that quahty and safety are affected not only by operators professional and technical competence and skills, but also by their attitudes to and perceptions of their job roles, their organisation and management (Helmreich and Merritt 1998). Such employee attitudes and views are important elements which shape safety cirlture - and its related notion safety climate . Indeed, survey studies have shown that staff attitudes are important indices of safety performance not only in human-machine system domains such as railway operations and constmction (e.g. Itoh and Andersen 1999 Itoh et al. 2004 Silva et al. 2004) but also in healthcare (e.g. Colla et al. 2005 Itoh and Andersen 2010). 

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