High Reliability Organisations (HROs) operate in complex, high-risk environments where accidents might be expected to occur frequently, but they actually have fewer than might be expected. However, recent thinking suggests that what defines a HRO is not safety or reliability performance, but how it thinks and acts. The key is that HROs anticipate the unexpected AND contain the unexpected when it occurs.
The current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of the best practices of the HRO approach.
This article outlines the five key characteristics of HROs in order to help organisations respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and other future unexpected events.
Trevor Kletz was a safety hero. Over a career spanning nearly 70 years, his thoughts on human factors, human error and accident investigation helped to move the industry from a focus on individual behaviour to organisational and system failures. His proposal that we should shift from blame to learning is the basis of current safety thinking.
The ‘ironies of automation’ refers to a set of unintended consequences as a result of automation, that could detrimentally affect human performance on critical tasks. Automation might increase human performance issues, rather than eliminate them.
Measuring the workload that people experience is important, because subjective workload has an impact on human performance. A high workload eats into our limited mental resources and can lead to errors, near-misses and incidents. Workload is often measured by the resources available (such as nurse-to-patient staffing ratios), but workload is experienced differently by different people. For example, two nurses assigned to the same number of patients in the same Intensive Care Unit may experience workload differently due to the stability and complexity of their patients. Therefore, a subjective measure of workload can provide helpful insights beyond traditional measures such as staffing ratios. One of the most common measures of subjective workload developed by the NASA Human Performance Group is now available as an App and can be applied in any industry.
Each year, thousands of people are killed in road accidents due to drivers being distracted by their mobile phone. Despite awareness campaigns, people continue to use their smartphones whilst driving. This article outlines some of the reasons why smartphones can be addictive and provides some practical tips to help manage the relationship we have with our devices.
This article was prompted by the 2019 television drama series ‘Chernobyl’, and focuses on human error, safety culture and designing for safety. It provides some discussion points to engage with your key stakeholders and to facilitate safety moments.
The UK NHS (National Health Service), like healthcare in other countries, is a complex system. It is one of the largest employers in the world – some NHS Trusts employ around 20,000 staff and have a turnover of more than £1 billion. The NHS is not a single organisation – there are many parts that make up the NHS. However, these components do not operate as separate entities, they are interconnected and work together as a system. This creates challenges for those that lead these organisations. A recent report on leadership by The King’s Fund: “Leadership in today’s NHS: Delivering the impossible” questions whether senior leadership roles in the NHS are still “do-able”.
Could you be killed by a car tonight? You’re perhaps thinking that I’m referring to a road traffic accident – as an occupant in a vehicle, or maybe as a pedestrian or cyclist. But there’s another way that you could be killed by a car tonight – YOUR car in fact. And this isn’t a reference to the Stephen King novel “Christine”, about a car apparently possessed by supernatural forces. This article examines how a technological change has led to tragedy. Please share this “safety moment” with family, friends and colleagues.
How do we “think”? And what’s the role of Working Memory in thinking?
Little has been written about Working Memory in relation to human performance in the workplace – and so in this article I introduce the concept of working memory, discuss why it’s important and provide some advice on managing it’s limitations.
12 questions to ask in an investigation – getting behind the label of ‘human error’
