Safety systems information

Besides setting the culture through their own behavior, managers need to establish the organizational safety policy and create a safety control structure with appropriate responsibilities, accountability and authority, safety controls, and feedback channels. Management must also establish a safety management plan and ensure that a safety information system and continual learning and improvement processes are in place and effective. 

This chapter starts with a discussion of the role of specifications and how systems theory can be used as the foundation for the specification of complex systems. Then an example of how to put the components together in system design and development is presented. Chapters 11 and 12 cover how to maximize learning from accidents and incidents and how to enforce safety constraints during operations. The design of safety information systems is discussed in chapter 13. 

This chapter describes the implications of STAMP on operations. Some topics that are relevant here are left to the next chapter on management organizational design, safety culture and leadership, assignment of appropriate responsibilities throughout the safety control structure, the safety information system, and corporate safety policies. These topics span both development and operations and many of the same principles apply to each, so they have been put into a separate chapter. A final section of this chapter considers the application of STAMP and systems thinking principles to occupational safety. 

Review procedures and participants Safety Information System... 

Create and update the organizational safety information system. 

Setting up a safety information system for a single project or product may be easier. The effort starts in the development process and then is passed on for use in operations. The information accumulated during the safety-driven design process provides the baseline for operations, as described in chapter 12. For example, the identification of critical items in the hazard analysis can be used as input to the maintenance process for prioritization. Another example is the use of the assumptions underlying the hazard analysis to guide the audit and performance assessment process. But first the information needs to be recorded and easily located and used by operations personnel. 

All of the information in the safety information system will probably not be in one document, but there should be a central location containing pointers to where all the information can be found. Chapter 12 contains a list of what should be in an operations safety management plan. The overall safety management plan will contain similar information with some additions for development. 

Kjellen, Urban. 1982. An evaluation of safety information systems at six medium-sized and large firms. Journal of Occupational Accidents 3 213-2. ... 

Safety reporting systems in healthcare have drawn their inspiration from similar systems in other industries, particularly aviation and the nuclear industry. Reporting systems in aviation are now well developed and provide important safety related feedback, although this has not always been the case. Captain Mike Holton describes the situation which led to the establishment of the British Airways safety information system (BASIS), a state of affairs which may be strangely familiar to many clinicians and managers in healthcare ... 

Company safety information systems An example is British Airways BASIS system, which record all levels of safety-related incidents. Information is shared on a peer basis within systems, and staff report with an explicit reassurance that no individual will be pursued for an honest mistake... 

Fred, W., (2001). A road safety information system from concept to implementation. Leidschendam, SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research, The Netherlands, pp. 7-9. 

The institution has in place rapid, useful, and intelligible feedback channels to communicate the lessons learned from both the reactive and proactive safety information systems. Throughout the institution the emphasis is on generalizing these lessons to the system at large rather than merely localizing failures and weaknesses. 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Goals for working safely with Mycobacterium tuberculosis in clinical, public health, and research facilities. Office of Health and Safety Information System... 

Finally, organizations must be willing to introduce changes in their regular practices in order to accommodate recommendations from their safety information system. 

In effect, development of these new polices and the focus on the social and ethical contract represents the start of the Region s journey on this safety culture road. As clearly delineated by Reason (1997), an oiganizahon with a safety culture equates to one with an informed culture , that is, having an effective safety information system. A safety culture is also one that supports reporting, is just, demonstrates flexibility, and encourages learning. 

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