Key issues of health and safety for workers in residential aged care : an expert study
- Authors: Seaward, Liz , Morgan, Damian , Thomson, Alana
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Frontiers in Public Health Vol. 10, no. (2023), p.
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- Description: Introduction: Residential aged care (RAC) represents a fast-growing sector within Australia's health care system and is characterized by high levels of workplace injury. To better understand this injury problem, this study investigated key informant perspectives concerning sector occupational health and safety (OHS) focused on key issues associated with the risk of worker injury. Method: Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with nine key informants representing (OHS) specialists, healthcare employers, regulators, worker association representatives, and academic researchers in OHS or healthcare. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: This study identified six themes on OHS within RAC including (i) the physical and emotional nature of the work, (ii) casualization of employment, (iii) prioritization, (iv) workforce profile, (v) OHS role construction, and (vi) clinical standards. The study highlighted differences in OHS roles between RAC and other safety-critical sectors regarding governance and management of OHS. The key informants identified a propensity within RAC to downplay or disregard worker OHS issues justified through prioritizing resident safety. Further, neither OHS professional nor institutional logics are prominent in RAC leadership and decision-making where the emphasis is placed on mandatory standards to maintain funding purposes. Several recommendations are made to address identified issues. Copyright © 2023 Seaward, Morgan and Thomson.
Perceptions of façade risks : A preliminary analysis towards the presentation of knowledge graphically
- Authors: Edirisinghe, Ruwini , Stranieri, Andrew , Blismas, Nick , Harley, James
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: CIB W099: Safety and Health in Construction p. 373-382
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- Description: Prevention through Design (PtD) in construction has been identified as an important factor to improve Workplace Health and Safety (WHS). However, challenges exist implementing PtD in practice due to technical, social and regulatory complexity. Moreover, WHS is poorly embedded in curricula of design professionals who generally have limited experience of construction methodologies. Attempts to assist designers with the relevant knowledge in the past have been limited to generic risk assessment guides, sample databases, or static knowledge-based systems. We propose that a graphical knowledge based information visualisation device, an infographic, can cue designers to consider relevant knowledge. Façade design is selected as the case study of the project, which involves the development of an infographic and experimental evaluation to determine its impact. The first phase of the project covered the development of the infographic, however this paper reports the findings related to the second phase of this ongoing project; the experimental evaluation of the infographic. A Q-methodology was selected and administered to a group to determine the subjectivity inherent in façade design risk perceptions prior to the introduction of the infographic to the same group in a workshop environment. 27 participants including designers/architects, engineers, contractors and safety professionals were recruited for the project. Each participant was asked to sort photographs of 16 different façade systems into five categories ranging from safest to least safe. The participants were asked to consider the construction risks associated with the façade design presented in each photo and to provide reasons for their sort selection. Preliminary data analysis of the whole population of data is presented in this paper and a rationale for the common agreements among the whole group is investigated. Further analysis including group-level and detailed quantitative analysis are ongoing.
Meaningful and effective consultation and the construction industry of Victoria, Australia
- Authors: Ayers, Gerard , Culvenor, John , Sillitoe, Jim , Else, Dennis
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Construction Management and Economics Vol. 31, no. 6 (2013), p. 542-567
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- Description: Consultation between employers and employees is mandated under Australian occupational health and safety legislation. For consultation to be considered meaningful and effective, it is generally accepted that moral and ethical principles such as trust, honesty, commitment and respect need to be recognized and applied by individuals during consultation. It is also considered that an organization's level of cultural maturity is an important element in the ability of individuals to freely engage in meaningful and effective consultation. If the value of consultation is best reflected in the degree of input and control that workers have regarding the very decisions that affect them, and if the level of worker involvement is a reflection of an organization's level of cultural maturity, it is debateable whether the notion of applying moral and ethical principles during consultation, and the adoption of the paradigm of organizational and cultural maturity, have been successfully developed and embraced in the commercial and industrial sector of the construction industry of Victoria, Australia. © 2013 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
- Description: C1
Concepts of accident causation and their role in safe design among engineering students
- Authors: Hall, Stephen , Culvenor, John , Cowley, Stephen , Else, Dennis
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 18th conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education, Melbourne, Victoria : 9th-13th December 2007
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- Description: Safe design is a strong theme at present in Australia. To ‘eliminate hazards at the design stage’ is one of the five national priorities set out by the National OHS Strategy. The Australian Safety and Compensation Council have recently released both a guideline for safe design and an engineering education package. Safe design is not only about engineering decisions. Engineers are however an important group. This paper reports on a survey to evaluate perceptions of student engineers on topics relevant to the advancement of safe design including perceptions of: control versus fatalism; accident causation; and perceptions of the role played by engineers.
- Description: 2003004787
OH&S in small business : Influencing the decision makers : The application of a social marketing model to increase the uptake of OHS risk control
- Authors: Cowley, Stephen
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
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- Description: Losses resulting from traumatic injuries and occupational disease are prevalent in the small business sector of Australian industry. Although the true size of the problem is unclear, it is estimated that the losses amount to more than $8 billion annually. The hazard control measures to counter these losses are largely known and are available to small businesses but they are not widely adopted. Regulators and other bodies have employed a range of intervention strategies to influence decision-makers in small businesses but most have focussed on the dissemination of printed materials or broadbased advertising campaigns with limited success......... The research concludes that the listening processes at the heart of social marketing add to the methods already used in the OHS discipline by forcing the marketer to listen to the subjective assessment of risk as perceived by targets as well as to question the evidence base that supports the legitimacy and efficacy of the proposed intervention. The TTM was found to be a useful means of categorising small business decision-maker behaviour and assessing the readiness for change of individuals and therefore the messages that are needed to unfreeze behaviour. The TTM also provides a tool for evaluation of the impact of an intervention.As a result of this research it is suggested that opinion leaders, who are employed within a social marketing model to diffuse information, multiply the effort of those wishing to increase the adoption of an innovation. Thus engagement of opinion leaders by an OHS authority for the communication of risk control messages may be more cost-effective than attempting to visit every workplace within an industry group. Thus, although social marketing is not in the general repertoire of OHS interventions, it appears to be extremely useful as a framework for interventions and, when used in concert with a stages of change model, provides natural lead indicators for evaluating the impact of OHS interventions. Application of social marketing to people who have the responsibility for the health and safety of others was unique.
- Description: Doctor of Philosphy
Learning to improve safety : The role of communities of practice and collective mindfulness
- Authors: Borys, David
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at Safety in Action Conference, Melbourne : 21st March, 2005
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- Description: E1
- Description: 2003002693
Comparison of team and individual judgements of solutions to safety problems
- Authors: Culvenor, John
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Safety Science Vol. 41, no. 6 (2003), p. 543-556
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- Description: Knowledge about how best to solve problems in occupational health and safety and how to be innovative in general is important to all industry. With the advent of non-prescriptive workplace safety legislation in Australia (and internationally), the need for problem solving at an enterprise level has never been greater. The legislation calls for problem solving to take place via a cooperative approach between employers and employees and this manifests itself as committees, risk improvement teams and the like. Unfortunately research in problem solving generally has showed us that interacting teamwork is less effective that individual thinking in terms of generating solutions to problems. However, there has been little research on the comparison of individuals and teams as regards the decision-making stage of problem solving that must naturally follow the idea generation stage. This research compared individuals and teams based on decision-making in health and safety. Subjects were 294 manufacturing industry employees arranged into 38 teams. Subjects ranked solutions to safety problems individually and then repeated the exercise in teams where they sought to develop a team consensus. The average of individual judgements were compared with the team consensus judgements in a paired design. The results indicate that the consensus judgement of the teams was much better than the average of the individuals that comprised the team. The implications are that, while idea generation is probably best achieved individually, judgements and decision about solutions is probably best performed through a consensus approach.
- Description: 2003003023
Effect of creative thinking on OHS committees
- Authors: Culvenor, John , Ayers, Gerard
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Occupational Health and Safety, Australia and New Zealand Vol. 18, no. 3 (2002), p. 239-246
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- Description: An important principle of Australian OHS law is that workers participate in the management of health and safety via OHS committees and representatives. A further principle is that workplaces engage in problem solving processes according to a hierarchy of hazard control - rather than simply following prescriptive rules. The OHS committee is therefore a problem-solving forum. However, the benefits of problem- solving or creative thinking techniques within committees have not been widely explored. To test the effects, two OHS committees from two construction companies were trained in a combination of creative thinking and risk control concepts. Subjects were tested on their ability to generate solutions and to rank solutions. They were compared with untrained subjects from two further committees. The results showed that the trained subjects generated more solutions and, when ranking solutions, showed a greater preference for solutions which were higher on the hierarchy of controls. (author abstract)
- Description: 2003003032