Safety culture attributes

A positive and mature safety culture promotes open dialogue on issues, discusses improvement strategies by engaging a broad array of employees, and will not tolerate deviation from established procedures. Many in an organization may not immediately internalize these seemingly soft concepts. It is the responsibility of management from the board of directors and senior executives downward to identify, develop, and nurture attributes of a healthy safety... 

Accidents and near-miss incidents are always a result of multiple causes, normally a combination of high-risk conditions and practices, and seldom, if ever, is an accident or a near-miss incident attributable to a single cause. Proactive safety cultures endeavor to determine all the contributing causes of an accident and do not dwell on the behavior only. This practice is termed looking beyond the injured. 

One of the attributes of a positive safety culture is when safety items receive prompt attention. High-risk practices and acts that are reported should receive attention, and remedial measures should be forthcoming. Reports of near-miss incidents should be recorded, tracked, and feedback given to everyone, not only the reporter. A system of risk ranking is useful in allocating resources and priorities to safety action items. If not ranked, all safety items will be considered as priority, and with all items being the priority, none will be handled in a timely manner. 

Management of safety in order to promote a strong safety culture and achieve high standards of safety performance. Similar to process safety management attributes. 

Item banks can be created across different patient safety culture instmments and also across different countries or healthcare settings. Based on estimated item parameters, items can be identified with the same and different characteristics across healthcare systems, which will in turn allow a better understanding of similarities and unique attributes depending on the contexts within which healthcare is delivered. 

Some attributes of a strong safety culture include the following ... 

Another issue is being able to learn from incidents and capture those lessons into design, procedures, training, maintenance, and other programs. One of the attributes of a good safety culture that is a must is leamingjrom incidents [12]."... 

First, let s review a list of principal management leadership traits we have seen effectively utilized throughout our careers in various industries and work environments. For practical purposes, we will focus only on a few of the more apparently critical attributes we have observed, which have helped to maintain a keen focus on the impact of leadership and the safety culture s management system. The list includes, but is not limited to, the following ... 

Their document lists nine attributes of a robust safety culture. They are listed in Table 1.11. 

Behaviors prior to and dnring the Fukushima Daiichi event revealed the need to strengthen several aspects of nuclear safety culture. It would be beneficial for all nnclear operating organizations to examine their own practices and behaviors in light of this event and use case studies or other approaches to heighten awareness of safety culture principles and attributes. 

The company decided to leverage its internal best practices, and the results of its external benchmarking to capitalize on its existing successful programs yet build attributes toward a more proactive SMS and safety culture. They focused on the following actions ... 

OR crisis events are often the results of unforeseen internal or external problems, and can frequently be attributed to human cognitive error or complex system safety cultures. There is seldom a single cause leading to an accident. The error chain is a concept to describe human error accidents as the result of a sequence of events that, uninterrupted may culminate in serious injury and death. The links of these error chains are identifiable by means of up to ten clues (table 1). Recognizing and breaking one link in the error chain will likely prevent the potential adverse event. 

The effort is made to implement the same attributes of safety culture in specific countries. 

Application of the following principles is the outcome of properly handled attributes of safety culture in business ... 

The outcome of handling attributes of safety culture and qnality culture in an organization within its management means being aware of the following facts ... 

Judy s near-hit report was also clearly biased by common attribution errors researched by social psychologists and used by all of us at some time to deflect potential criticism and reduce distress. Attribution errors, along with stress and distress, represent potential barriers to achieving a Total Safety Culture. 

The next section of this chapter introduces another means of reducing distress. It is a phenomenon that has particular implications for safety. In the aftermath of an injury or near hit, it can distort reports and incident analyses. This results in inappropriate or less-than-optimal suggestions for corrective action. This phenomenon of attributional bias can also create communication barriers between people and limit the co-operative participation needed to achieve a Total Safety Culture. 

A Total Safety Culture, then, requires us to balance how we measure and manage both organizational performance and individual behavior. The challenge is to accurately attribute change in safety performance. Is it due to individual behavior, groups, or the system Individuals should only be held directly responsible for their own safety performance teams should be held accountable for outcomes directly related to their team performance. 

Leaders put people s attributes and skills on a continuum. A person is not good or bad, skilled or unskilled, safe or unsafe at a particular task but rather is a particular degree of good, skilled, and safe. Plus, one s quality level for a cerfain attribute can fluctuate dramatically from one situation to another. Thus, leaders make more distinctions between people and fewer global stereotypes. This enables objective and fair linkage between people s talents and job descriptions and facilitates the kind of interpersonal trust needed for a Total Safety Culture (Geller, 1999). 

---