Serious injury prevention safety culture

Valid statistical measures, such as control charts, are convincing. In some situations, such as initiating the cultural change necessary to call attention to serious injury prevention, the frequency of occurrence data on such incidents that would be placed on a control chart will not be available since the subject is low-probability/severe-consequence events that do not occur often. Cost data for such events can be influential. For an additional reference, see Measurement of Safety Performance in On The Practice Of Safety. 

The significance of an organization s safety culture in serious injury prevention and causal factor determination... 

SERIOUS INJURY PREVENTION MUST BE EMBEDDED IN AN ORGANIZATION S SAFETY CULTURE... 

Several references were made in Chapter 3, Serious Injury Prevention, to human errors as the causal factors for accidents. And it was said that many serious injuries result from recurring but potentially avoidable human errors, and that organizational, cultural, technical, and management systems deficiencies often lead to those errors. Emphasizing human error reduction above the worker level, although proposed many years ago as a preventive measure, is not prominent in the work of safety professionals. 

In addition to the previously described methods to avoid serious injury, other preventive techniques are also available. Although it is suggested that safety practitioners make adaptations from the following techniques as specific measures to identity hazards that present serious injury potential, these methods can encompass all types of incidents. Those adaptations should suit the culture and need of a particular operation. 

This chapter will help operations managers and safety professionals understand the adverse trending with respect to serious injuries and their costs, the challenges they face in implementing the conceptual and culture changes necessary to reduce serious injuries, and the actions that can be taken to prevent serious injuries. Thus, this chapter presents ... 

One could ask the following Since the characteristics of serious injuries, the types of activities or exposures out of which many serious injuries occur, and the statistical trending concerning them have been known for some time, why have they not received more attention from the safety community There are two age-old beliefs, often promoted by safety professionals, that are barriers to making the necessary inquiry into the reality of design and engineering, operational systems, and cultural causal factors for incidents resulting in serious injury. Those beliefs, which derive from statements made in H. W. Heinrich s Industrial Accident Prevention, are ... 

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. 

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 book dispels the myths that currently drive societies (misguided) view of traffic safety— the bad behavior myth and the official myth that everything that can be done is being done—and how these myths limit progress in reducing death and serious injury. It presents current scientific knowledge and draws parallels with other areas of public safety and health. The book draws on examples from the media and from public policy debates to paint a clear picture of a flawed public policy approach. It presents a model for a preventive medicine approach to traffic safety policy to get beyond an ego-centric culture to a communal safety culture. 

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