I heard about this report from David McRaney’s excellent You Are Not So Smart podcast. It’s a free resource that covers some current science around misinformation and how to debunk it. It’s an easy read and worth downloading. It highlights the: One technique they describe (among others) is called “inoculation”. Inoculation seeks to counter the… Continue reading The Debunking Handbook 2020

This explored the use (and limitations) of a risk matrix for assessing risks related to a public health issue when the frequency and severity of risks are negatively correlated. They constructed a risk assessment matrix using tainted blood transfusion infection risk, which had a negative correlation between frequency and consequence. They used experiential data to… Continue reading Can Public Health Risk Assessment Using Risk Matrices Be Misleading?

This experimental studied whether checklists can lead to the concealment of unlisted items in the use of checklists. That is, in some cases people using a checklist may miss *more* unlisted things compared to people using a checklist, or as the authors put it, leave people “selectively vulnerable to unlisted sources of error” (p1527). While… Continue reading The Unintended Consequences of Checklists

Abstract The current study explored underlying beliefs regarding work safety among a sample of experienced Australian electrical workers. A qualitative research methodology using the theory of planned behaviour as a framework was employed. A series of interviews and focus groups with licensed electrical workers (N = 46) were analyzed using thematic content analysis. Beliefs were… Continue reading Identifying safety beliefs among Australian electrical workers

This brief discussion paper explores some challenges facing the design and implementation of checklists. Because this paper is open access (you can read the full paper), I’ll only pull out a few points. It has a focus on healthcare but is applicable elsewhere. First it’s said that checklists have become the “go-to solution for a… Continue reading The problem with checklists

Drawing on data gathered from a real-life healthcare near incident, three different incident analysis methods are compared based on their abilities to generate system-level outputs and recommendations. These are: 1) Root cause analysis (5 Whys), 2) HFACS (The Human Factors Analysis Classification System) 3) AcciMap In describing the basis for the study, it’s said that… Continue reading To err is system; a comparison of methodologies for the investigation of adverse outcomes in healthcare

Abstract The construction industry has long accounted for one of the highest injury and fatality rates of any single-service industry. Within the construction industry, a promising technique is construction hazard prevention through design (CHPtD). Logically, CHPtD is only effective to the extent that construction hazards have emerged and are recognizable during the design phase. The… Continue reading Measuring and improving designer hazard recognition skill: Critical competency to enable prevention through design

This research looked at cyclical fluctuations in workplace accidents, whether reporting accidents affects worker firing rate, and how the economy affects these relationships. It drew on a large Austrian accident reporting insurance dataset between 2000-2006 from male blue-collar workers. Results Importantly, it was found that “Workers who report a workplace accident in the previous year… Continue reading Recessions Are Bad for Workplace Safety

This undertook a text analysis of 48 RCA investigations to explore how RCA methods facilitate the exploration of systematic patient safety improvements. Notable challenges in the application of RCA was covered in the paper, including translation of RCA methods into practice. For healthcare one challenge is applying these techniques to complex social contexts (e.g. ‘wicked… Continue reading Lifting the lid on root cause analysis – A document analysis

This studied whether an exposure-response association exists between physical demands in early working life (e.g. young adults just starting out) and risk of low back pain (LBP) later in working life. Data was extracted from the SeniorWorkingLife study, which had 5909 wage earners aged >50 and currently sedentary work answer a survey about their physical… Continue reading Is hard physical work in the early working life associated with back pain later in life – A cross-sectional study among 5700 older workers