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A GUIDE TO MEASURING
HEALTH & SAFETY
PERFORMANCE
December 2001
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MEASURING HEALTH AND SAFETY PERFORMANCE
Contents
Introduction
How will this guidance help me?
What the guidance is not
Why is guidance necessary?
Why measure performance?
Introduction
Providing information
Answering questions
Decision making
Addressing different information needs
What to measure
Introduction
Measuring the hazard burden
Measuring the health and safety management system
Measuring failure - reactive monitoring
Measuring the health and safety culture
Planning and implementing - a more detailed look
When to measure performance
Who should measure performance
How to measure performance
Introduction
Deriving performance measures
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They struggle to develop health and safety performance measures which are not based solely on injury and ill health statistics. The traditional approach to measuring health and safety performance
If managing directors or CEOs were asked how they measured their companies’ performance, they would probably mention measures like percentage profit, return on investment or market share. A common feature of the measures quoted would be that they are generally positive in nature - reflecting achievement - rather than negative, reflecting failure.
If the same people were asked how they measured their companies’ health and safety performance, it is likely that the only measure quoted would be injury statistics. While the general business performance of an organisation is subject to a range of positive measures, for health and safety it too often
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comes down to one negative measure, injury and ill health statistics - measures of failures.
Health and safety differs from many areas measured by managers because success results in the absence of an outcome (injuries or ill health) rather than a presence. But a low injury or ill-health rate, even over a period of years, is no guarantee that risks are being controlled and will not lead to injuries or ill health in the future. This is particularly true in organisations where there is a low probability of accidents but where major hazards are present. Here the historical record can be a
Review the risks – the effectiveness of the precautions in place should be checked regularly to ensure that they are sufficient.
The main objective of Beaumont Hospital is to provide high quality, efficient, accessible services, in a caring environment for Southeastern Michigan residents. Beaumont Hospital believes that patient safety is just as important as medical progression. Therefore, Beaumont Hospital’s risk management program consists of identifying hazard associated risks, controlling risks, and monitoring the effectiveness of procedures/practices. Risk is a part of patient care and services because everything doesn’t always go according to plan. Catastrophic patient injuries often occur because of unanticipated failures. The risk management team is responsible of effective surveillance, analysis, and prevention of events which may injure patients, lead to malpractice claims, or cause loss to the health care system. The risk management staff at Beaumont use the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) as a tool to anticipate what might go wrong with a process or product and how that failure effects the patient. FMEA is designed to dissect a particular process into its individual steps, isolate the potential steps that could cause the problem, assign a specific risk level to each abnormal step, analyze the risk potential for the process, and assign and action plan to correct the problem (Fibuch & Ahmed, 2014). The risk management team also evaluates and modifies potential problems. Beaumont Hospital’s risk management team helps avoid or eliminate risks by identifying an alternate
The risk management program in any business, especially in a health care organization is an integral part of its day to day operation. The purpose of the risk management department is summed up by Kavaler & Alexander (2014), “…a program designed to reduce the incidence of preventable accidents and injuries to minimize the financial loss to the institution should any accident or injury occur” (p. 5). Protecting employees, patients, vendors and visitors is an ongoing process and one that needs to be updated when the healthcare organization has deemed necessary. This paper will demonstrate the importance of presenting the risk management program to new employees, compliance with the standards set forth by the American Society of Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM), propose recommendations or changes needed to further improve the program, as well as examine the administrative process of managing a risk program.
Answer – If there is ever any doubt that health and safety/risk management procedures and practices are not being adhered to, then immediate action is required. Within my workplace we have a responsible individual who ensures that risk assessments
The purpose of risk assessment is not to remove risks, but to take reasonable steps to reduce them. The process involves looking at the risk, and considering what can be done to make it less likely that the risk will develop into a reality. This can be done through implementing policies and codes of practice, acting in individual’s best interests, fostering culture of openness and support being consistent, maintaining professional boundaries and following systems for raising concerns.
Risk assessments can help address dilemmas between rights and health and safety concerns by helping reduce any risks created by undergoing certain tasks, risks assessments are not in place to prevent an individual doing things that they want to do, they are in place to concentrate on the risk factors and to look at any other ways to reduce the risk of the task in hand.
Crossing the Quality Chasm defines safe as, “avoiding injuries to patients from the care that is intended to help them” (p. 5). Ideally, this aim is to help protect patients from harm, improve on safe patient-care practices, and utilize the most up to date evidence-based medicine for better outcomes.
Risks come in many forms, for example, the risk of infection or the risk of personal injury from damaged equipment or dangerous lifting practises.
It is important to assess health and safety risks in order to reduce or eliminate them. Risk assessments are vitally important in order to protect the health and safety of both you and the individual’s you support. You should always check that a risk assessment has been carried out before you undertake any task in order for you to follow the steps identified and reduce any risk posed. There are many regulations that require risks
*provide protective clothing or PPE free of charge if risks can't be removed or adequately controlled by any other means
Patient safety one of the driving forces of healthcare. Patient safety is defined as, “ the absence of preventable harm to a patient during the process of healthcare or as the prevention of errors and adverse events caused by the provision of healthcare rather than the patient’s underlying disease process. (Kangasniemi, Vaismoradi, Jasper, &Turunen, 2013)”. It was just as important in the past as it is day. Our healthcare field continues to strive to make improvement toward safer care for patients across the country.
Accordingly, they found 48 employer safety obligations (e.g., provide personal protective equipment, reward safe working behaviour, and investigates hazards and risks), and 36 employee safety obligation items such as use work equipment properly, report safety incident, and follow safety rules.. However, even though they did not use psychometrically validated measurement, those obligation items can be used in the measuring physical psychological safety. Thus, physical risk psychological safety items will be derived from this measurement.
In today’s health care system, “quality” and “safety” are one in the same when it comes to patient care. As Florence Nightingale described our profession long ago, it takes work and vigilance to ensure we are doing the best we can to care for our patients. (Mitchell, 2008)