This publication provides practical guidance on how to conduct a safety culture self assessment. The focus is on using such assessments as a learning opportunity for organizational growth and development rather than as a fault finding or find and fix exercise. The approach involves considerable engagement with all levels of the organization. Methods applied include document reviews questionnaires interviews observations and focus groups. Besides the complexity and subtleties of safety culture it also describes how to avoid common pitfalls in analyzing results. The information presented in this publication will be of interest to individuals engaged in assessing and improving safety culture.
Food safety awareness is at an all time high, new and emerging threats to the food supply are being recognized, and consumers are eating more and more meals prepared outside of the home. Accordingly, retail and foodservice establishments, as well as food producers at all levels of the food production chain, have a growing responsibility to ensure that proper food safety and sanitation practices are followed, thereby, safeguarding the health of their guests and customers. Achieving food safety success in this changing environment requires going beyond traditional training, testing, and inspectional approaches to managing risks. It requires a better understanding of organizational culture and the human dimensions of food safety. To improve the food safety performance of a retail or foodservice establishment, an organization with thousands of employees, or a local community, you must change the way people do things. You must change their behavior. In fact, simply put, food safety equals behavior. When viewed from these lenses, one of the most common contributing causes of food borne disease is unsafe behavior (such as improper hand washing, cross-contamination, or undercooking food). Thus, to improve food safety, we need to better integrate food science with behavioral science and use a systems-based approach to managing food safety risk. The importance of organizational culture, human behavior, and systems thinking is well documented in the occupational safety and health fields. However, significant contributions to the scientific literature on these topics are noticeably absent in the field of food safety.
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.
These proceedings present the outcome of an international conference, at which the nuclear community had the opportunity to reflect on the pivotal role that human and organizational aspects play in assuring nuclear safety. Held 30 years after the Chernobyl accident which led to the international adoption of the concept of safety culture, the conference provided distinguished experts and practitioners with a unique opportunity to share insights from the past and visions for a safer future. The publication contains the conference opening and closing addresses, summaries of all conference sessions as well as the fully edited papers produced for the conference plenary sessions. The papers presented at the parallel sessions and dialogue sessions of the conference are included in their original form in the CD-ROM accompanying the publication.
This Safety Report has been developed as part of the IAEA programme on occupational radiation protection to provide for the application of its safety standards in implementing a graded approach to the protection of workers against exposures associated with uranium mining and processing. The publication describes the methods of production associated with the uranium industry and provides practical information on the radiological risks to workers in the exploration, mining and processing of uranium. It is a compilation of detailed information on uranium mining and processing stages and techniques, general radiation protection considerations in the relevant industry, general methodology applicable for control, monitoring and dose assessment, exposure pathways, and radiation protection programs for the range of commonly used mining and processing techniques.
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 attempts to look into the genesis of security culture as a concept which emerged with the recognition of the role of the human factor in the context of security. It traces the rapid evolution of security culture into a multi-functional discipline reinforced by supplementary tools such as assessment and enhancement methodologies, reviews practical steps to harmonize nuclear safety and security culture as well as recommends its practical application to address insider threats and their consequences. In addition, it demonstrates how to tailor the generic model of nuclear security culture to meet specific needs of diverse facilities and activities in different countries. Finally, the book discusses several challenges which need to be addressed to make security culture a user-friendly, universal, and sustainable instrument to turn the perception of the human factor as a liability into an asset of nuclear security.
This publication describes the general concept of using quantitative and qualitative information to be integrated in making safety related decisions. By following this approach, the balanced decision option could be selected in a systematic and traceable manner.
Human Factors in the Nuclear Industry: A Systemic Approach to Safety presents the latest research and studies of human factors in the nuclear industry. It models and highlights scientific and technological foundations before providing practical examples of applications within the nuclear facility of human performance at an individual, group, organization, and system level. Editors Dr. Teperi and Dr. Gotcheva supply concrete models, tools and techniques based on research to provide the reader with knowledge of how to facilitate and support human performance in this dynamic and fast moving safety critical field. Models and case studies are provided to add practical benefits for the reader to apply to their own projects, including user friendly state-of-the-art equipment, fluent work processes for information flow, functional control room resource management, and scope for competence and learning in the work place. This book will benefit nuclear researchers, safety experts, human factors professionals and power plant operators, as well as those with an interest in human factors outside of the nuclear field. - Provides a comprehensive framework for human factors, considering not only the individual, but also the team, organizational and industrial levels - Presents tried and tested tools and techniques based on research from the nuclear industry - Includes models, examples and case studies of user-friendly equipment, fluent work processes and functional control room resource management
The IAEA Safety Glossary defines and explains technical terms used in the IAEA Safety Standards and other safety related IAEA publications, and provides information on their usage. The 2018 Edition of the IAEA Safety Glossary is a new edition of the IAEA Safety Glossary, originally issued in 2007. It has been revised and updated to take into account new terminology and usage in safety standards issued between 2007 and 2018. The revisions and updates reflect developments in the technical areas of application of the safety standards and changes in regulatory approaches in Member States.
