Serious injury prevention

Manuele, Fred A., Advanced Scfety Management Focusing on ZIO and Serious Injury Prevention, 2nd ed., John Wiley Sons, Inc., New York, 2014. 

An abstract is provided for each chapter to serve as a content reference. This book gives guidance on applying the provisions of ANSI/AIHA ZlO-2005, the Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems Standard, and on serious injury prevention as interrelated subjects. The order in which chapters appear supports that rationale. 

How that major theme relates to serious injury prevention... 

RELATING THIS MAJOR THEME TO SERIOUS INJURY PREVENTION 9... 

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. 

Discussions of significant conceptual barriers to serious injury prevention that must be overcome... 

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... 

In a news release concerning a grant made by Alcoa to the Foundation for Indiana University of Pennsylvania (lUP) to support a national forum on fatality prevention in the workplace, Dr. Lon Ferguson, chair of the lUP Safety Sciences Department, is quoted as saying, The reliance on traditional approaches to fatality prevention has not always proven effective. I extend Ferguson s statement to include serious injury prevention. 

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. 

Safety professionals will do a better job in giving counsel on serious injury prevention if they are aware of human error causal factors. Focusing on improving management systems to meet ZIO provisions and minimizing serious injuries, this chapter ... 

Comments on the relationship between behavioral safety, human error reduction, and serious injury prevention. 

Another of James Reason s books—Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents—is a must read for safety professionals who want an education in human error reduction. It was published in 1997 and has been reprinted five times. Reason writes about how the effects of decisions accumulate over time and become the causal factors for incidents resulting in serious injuries or damage when all the circumstances necessary for the occurrence of a major event come together. This book was referenced in Chapter 3, Serious Injury Prevention, because it stresses the need to focus on decision making above the worker level to prevent major accidents. Reason writes this ... 

I suggest Donald A. Norman s The Psychology of Everyday Things, published in 1988, as an additional and important resource. Norman s background is in both engineering and the social sciences. This book was also referenced in Chapter 3, Serious Injury Prevention, because it concentrates on breakdowns and errors that are the causal factors for major accidents ... 

R. B. Whittingham s The Blame Machine Why Human Error Causes Accidents, a 2004 publication, is also referenced and recommended in Chapter 3, Serious Injury Prevention. Its emphasis is on human errors and defective management systems as causal factors for major accidents. From the Preface ... 

BEHAVIORAL SAFETY, HUMAN ERROR REDUCTION, AND SERIOUS INJURY PREVENTION... 

Worker-focused behavior-based safety does not examine the sources of human error in an organization above the worker level and has limited impact on serious injury prevention. 

Case made for special attention being given to serious injury prevention in the chapter with that title. 

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