SafetyInsights.org

One of the more important studies I’ve posted in a while…coffee is super. The greatest reduction in all-cause mortality was found for 3.5 cups/day, 2.5 cups/day for cardiovascular disease, and 2 cups/day for cancer mortality. The relationship between all-cause mortality and coffee consumption was found irrespective of age, overweight status, alcohol, smoking and caffeine status.… Continue reading Coffee consumption and all‑cause and cause‑specific mortality:a meta‑analysis by potential modifiers

This was really interesting. It explored when does leader humility lead to positive versus negative worker outcomes and why? Leader humility is defined as “an interpersonal characteristic that emerges in social contexts that connotes (a) a manifested willingness to view oneself accurately, (b) a displayed appreciation of others’ strengths and contributions, and (c) teachability, or… Continue reading The double-edged sword of leader humility: Investigating when and why leader humility promotes versus inhibits subordinate deviance

ABSTRACT Individuals in high-risk occupations (e.g., military service) often report physical, psychological, and organizational problems. Although leaders can partially buffer their subordinates against these problems, the impact of established leadership skills appears limited, especially in high-risk occupations. Thus, building on recent theories of domain-specific leadership, we examined whether leadership focused on the specific domain of… Continue reading Sleep Leadership in High-Risk Occupations: An Investigation of Soldiers on Peacekeeping and Combat Missions

Has the concept of safety culture become a “grab bag of behavioral and other visible characteristics” that has lost much of its depth and subtlety? This is a fantastic paper by Frank Guldenmund scheduled for a summary in the near future. Some points I liked: ·        Facets of culture and how they relate to performance largely… Continue reading Understanding or misunderstanding safety culture

This paper drew on a real medical failure event to discuss three artificial perspectives on learning: 1) a human centred/cognitive perspective (what things looked like from the doctor’s perspective) 2) an organisational perspective (a view of the healthcare system & hospital configuration) 3) a joint human/org. perspective (a blend of the views) I say artificial… Continue reading Overlooking causes in healthcare accident investigation: Choosing the analysis is choosing the results

It’s now widely recognised of the effects of acute sleep loss on cognitive performance. Comparisons between sustained wakefulness (i.e. acute sleep loss) and blood alcohol impairment have been made, finding simple reaction time are impaired to similar degrees after around the 20 h mark (see below from Maruff et al. 2005 – source in links).… Continue reading The insidious and sustained dangers of sleep loss

This study analysed trends in incident reporting over a 5-year period; specifically exploring the number and types of recommendations resulting from investigations. >16k patient safety incident reports were analysed. The authors provide a brief overview of some incident reporting challenges/issues in healthcare. Results The number of incident reports was found to have increased over the… Continue reading Problems with incident reporting – Reports lead rarely to recommendations

ABSTRACT Night-shift workers are at high risk of drowsiness-related motor vehicle crashes as a result of circadian disruption and sleep restriction. However, the impact of actual night-shift work on measures of drowsiness and driving performance while operating a real motor vehicle remains unknown. Sixteen night-shift workers completed two 2-h daytime driving sessions on a closed… Continue reading High risk of near-crash driving events following night-shift work

I found this an interesting comparison between the “asymmetry of signals”, that is, the asymmetry between the feedback we have for observing, monitoring and measuring efficiency versus safety. Source below. The asymmetry is characterised by: 1. Safety measures often being indirect and “noisy” compared to efficiency goal feedback. 2. Successful efficiency is generally more reinforcing… Continue reading The asymmetry of safety/efficiency signals

This study is really cool. It explored journalists’ language in their reporting of the US political campaign trail and what their word choices reveal about their cognitive mindsets – namely drawing on the system 1 / system 2 thinking concept and anchoring heuristic. Journalists’ twitter posts were compared against newspaper articles and broadcasts (>220k articles,… Continue reading Anchoring in the past, tweeting from the present – Cognitive bias in journalists’ word choices