Staying safe requires conscious thought

Judy Zeiger/Madigan Healthcare System Safety Office

How often do we have conscious thoughts about being safe?

Many actions and tasks performed daily are safety-based but are done out of habit rather than from a conscious decision-making process.

Actions such as fastening seat belts, holding onto a hand rail, turning the handles of pans on the stove so they can’t be reached by little hands and using non-slip mats in the shower are examples.

While no one starts their day expecting to come to work and get hurt, sometimes we perform an unsafe act knowing that it is unsafe and might even be against the law, such as talking on hand-held cell phones while driving.

While I’ve not conducted or read any organized research or formally collected data on this, I’ve been asking groups at every opportunity, “How many people here had a conscious thought this morning that they were going to have a safe day?” There have never been more than a few positive responses. So, the next question is, with this lack of deliberate safety consciousness, how do we develop and increase safety awareness?

Heinrich’s Domino Theory identifies three factors of accident causation. This theory states that accidents are caused by: unsafe acts about 85 percent of the time, unsafe conditions about 10 percent of the time, acts of nature that are unavoidable about five percent of the time.

Even though most accidents (about 85 percent, according to Heinrich) are caused by human factors, when something bad happens, people often don’t see themselves as having had any control.

Thinking is more along the line of “this has happened to me” rather than “what could I have done to prevent or lessen the impact of this accident?”

There is risk in everything that we do both in and out of the workplace. One of the requirements in promoting safety is to measure risk and recognize the what, where, when, why and how hazards present themselves.

Knowing the risks and the hazards associated with them enables us to make informed decisions and take precautions to prevent injuries.

At Madigan, we maintain an Accident/Injury Data Base where each incident is recorded with a brief description of what happened. The evaluation of this information helps identify where to focus Safety Program resources and energies on accident prevention.

There are a wide variety of different types of accidents reported to the Safety Office.

The three most frequent types of accidents are those resulting from sharp objects, lifting injuries, and those caused by slips, trips or falls. It’s important to realize there are some things they all have in common: they are disruptive to the work load; they affect mission readiness; they all have both direct and indirect costs; they affect quality of life of the individual; and they affect the morale of the team.

And, in almost every case, it’s very likely that the accident could have either been prevented altogether or at least mitigated to have lessened the impact.

Part of developing and maintaining a culture of safety is for all of us to take safety personally — to take ownership of our actions.

Make safety your goal every way, every day.