This book provides leaders in high risk industries a better understanding of how their values and behaviors can influence the organization's safety culture and improve its capacity to bounce back from failure. Examples are illustrated through case studies and practical tools are provided to evaluate and improve an organization's culture by improving leadership capability. This unique book integrates the areas of safety culture and high reliability from the perspective of leadership in a work team environment. Readers of the book will get a fresh perspective on safety culture and reliability that can be translated into practical steps for improving their organization through its leadership.

Building on the revolutionary Institute of Medicine reports To Err is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm, Keeping Patients Safe lays out guidelines for improving patient safety by changing nurses' working conditions and demands. Licensed nurses and unlicensed nursing assistants are critical participants in our national effort to protect patients from health care errors. The nature of the activities nurses typically perform â€" monitoring patients, educating home caretakers, performing treatments, and rescuing patients who are in crisis â€" provides an indispensable resource in detecting and remedying error-producing defects in the U.S. health care system. During the past two decades, substantial changes have been made in the organization and delivery of health care â€" and consequently in the job description and work environment of nurses. As patients are increasingly cared for as outpatients, nurses in hospitals and nursing homes deal with greater severity of illness. Problems in management practices, employee deployment, work and workspace design, and the basic safety culture of health care organizations place patients at further risk. This newest edition in the groundbreaking Institute of Medicine Quality Chasm series discusses the key aspects of the work environment for nurses and reviews the potential improvements in working conditions that are likely to have an impact on patient safety.

This book provides leaders in high risk industries a better understanding of how their values and behaviors can influence the organization's safety culture and improve its capacity to bounce back from failure. Examples are illustrated through case studies and practical tools are provided to evaluate and improve an organization's culture by improving leadership capability. This unique book integrates the areas of safety culture and high reliability from the perspective of leadership in a work team environment. Readers of the book will get a fresh perspective on safety culture and reliability that can be translated into practical steps for improving their organization through its leadership.

The objective of this book is to help at-risk organizations to decipher the “safety cloud”, and to position themselves in terms of operational decisions and improvement strategies in safety, considering the path already travelled, their context, objectives and constraints. What link can be established between safety culture and safety models in order to increase safety within companies carrying out dangerous activities? First, while the term “safety culture” is widely shared among the academic and industrial world, it leads to various interpretations and therefore different positioning when it comes to assess, improve or change it. Many safety theories, concepts, and models coexist today, being more or less appealing and/or directly useful to the industry. How, and based on which criteria, to choose from the available options? These are some of the questions addressed in this book, which benefits from the expertise of its worldwide famous authors in several industrial sectors.

In this compilation, the authors first analyze three components of safety culture: safety climate, safety values, and culture of prevention. The analysis includes both new empirical results and a review of earlier studies.Following this, Safety Culture: Progress, Trends and Challenges presents a report from ethnographic work at a large grain processing facility in the American Midwest. The grain industry is inherently dangerous with its heavy equipment, confined spaces and explosive environments. Sometimes the companies value efficiency and productivity over worker safety.Additionally, the authors examine differences in safety climate perceptions between permanent and contingent workers and associations to self-reported accidents/injuries in an organisation, considering possible relevant confounders.Possible interventions and strategic efforts as proposed as tools for the promotion and consolidation of organizational mindfulness. These interventions focus signal setting on management level and collective interactions on front-line level. Recommendations for the application in different settings derive from areas of work organization, work design, strategic agenda and value setting, as well as from the promotion of organizational cultural preferences.One paper presents a model that combines theories of organizational learning, human error and situation awareness in sociotechnical task environments. A hypothesis which emerges from this model is that people who possess a questioning attitude in respect to their own contribution to error causation possess a better situational awareness of their sociotechnical work environment.Later, the effect of crew resource management training on the medical personnel of an acute medical unit is investigated, as it is an auspicious method to achieve cultural changes in high risk environments and achieve a positive safety culture.In closing, because a core objective of the International Safety Management Code is advancement of criteria for an effective maritime safety policy, the extent to which the code has been effective is discussed.

Recent serious and sometimes fatal accidents in chemical research laboratories at United States universities have driven government agencies, professional societies, industries, and universities themselves to examine the culture of safety in research laboratories. These incidents have triggered a broader discussion of how serious incidents can be prevented in the future and how best to train researchers and emergency personnel to respond appropriately when incidents do occur. As the priority placed on safety increases, many institutions have expressed a desire to go beyond simple compliance with regulations to work toward fostering a strong, positive safety culture: affirming a constant commitment to safety throughout their institutions, while integrating safety as an essential element in the daily work of laboratory researchers. Safe Science takes on this challenge. This report examines the culture of safety in research institutions and makes recommendations for university leadership, laboratory researchers, and environmental health and safety professionals to support safety as a core value of their institutions. The report discusses ways to fulfill that commitment through prioritizing funding for safety equipment and training, as well as making safety an ongoing operational priority. A strong, positive safety culture arises not because of a set of rules but because of a constant commitment to safety throughout an organization. Such a culture supports the free exchange of safety information, emphasizes learning and improvement, and assigns greater importance to solving problems than to placing blame. High importance is assigned to safety at all times, not just when it is convenient or does not threaten personal or institutional productivity goals. Safe Science will be a guide to make the changes needed at all levels to protect students, researchers, and staff.

Safety management in the workplace is an issue of critical importance to business managers as well as those responsible for OHS in any organisation.However, although the concepts of safety, culture and risk have become increasing matters of concern and are often discussed, they are concepts that are not often clearly understood.This new book from Professor Andrew Hopkins focuses on these concepts, and deals with the complex issues in a clear, informative style that will both inform organisations and companies, and assist them to be better able to create safe environments for their employees and clients, and to mitigate risk.Content:The first three parts of the book advocate the development of risk-awareness. Part 1 is a general discussion of organisational culture.Part 2 is an empirical investigation of how organisational culture affects safety, using the Glenbrook train crash as a case study.Part 3 is a second case study of how organisational culture interfered with safety, focussing on the F111 inquiry at Amberley Air Force Base, Queensland.Part 4 is an extended discussion of the concept of risk, dealing with issues such as the assumption that risk can be objectively measured; the current view that risk is a product of likelihood and severity; the conflict between "acceptable risk" and "as low as reasonably practical" ; the tendency of risk management to become risk spreading rather than risk reduction; and the confusion between risk and hazard.Oxford University Press Australia & New Zealand is the non-exclusive distributor of this title.?