Hand-arm vibration: Swedish carpenters' perceptions of health and safety management

BACKGROUND

Workers in the construction industry are highly exposed to vibration from handheld equipment, which can have negative effects on the nerves and blood vessels in the hands. Employers in this industry often fail to comply with legislation regarding vibration exposure.

AIMS

To assess carpenters' perceptions of proactive health and safety (H&S) management regarding hand-arm vibration exposure at construction sites in Sweden.

METHODS

The carpenters answered a questionnaire on their perception of the implementation of H&S management, on symptoms indicating injury and on the use of vibrating equipment.

RESULTS

One hundred and ninety-four carpenters from 4 construction companies and 18 construction sites completed the questionnaire. Attitudes to H&S management were generally positive. However, 36% of the carpenters reported that the H&S regulations and routines did not function in practice, and 40% claimed they did not receive necessary information on the exposure and effects of vibration. Most respondents (74%) perceived a high risk of injury in general in their work. Younger carpenters, carpenters employed at smaller companies and carpenters with symptoms indicating injury or with higher vibration exposure reported more negative perceptions.

CONCLUSIONS

In general, the carpenters were positive about management's commitment to H&S management. However, the results indicate deficiencies in the way in which this commitment is applied in practice at the workplace. This highlights the importance of raising awareness concerning vibration exposure and possible injuries, and strengthening proactive H&S programmes, especially in smaller companies.

Safety Culture Onboard Ships

A project focusing on identifying and describing maritime risks is being conducted in the heavily trafficked water area of the Sound, situated in northern Europe between Sweden and Denmark. This paper reports of a test of a first version of a questionnaire constructed for measuring safety culture onboard vessels. 48 crew members on a Swedish registered passenger/cargo ship completed and returned the questionnaire. The crew members were able to complete the questionnaire with few unanswered questions. Acceptable homogeneity was obtained for all but one of the nine dimensions of safety culture. Significant differences on several of the safety culture dimensions were found between deck/engine vs catering personnel, men vs women and different age groups, while little differences where found for supervisors vs non-supervisors or people with varying number of years onboard. Such safety culture dimensions need to be studied in relation to reports of accidents and near-misses, to further study the true relevance of safety culture.

From a reactive to a proactive safety approach. Analysis of medication errors in chemotherapy using general failure types

A better understanding of why medication errors (MEs) occur will mean that we can work proactively to minimise them. This study developed a proactive tool to identify general failure types (GFTs) in the process of managing cytotoxic drugs in healthcare. The tool is based on Reason's Tripod Delta tool. The GFTs and active failures were identified in 60 cases of MEs reported to the Swedish national authorities. The most frequently encountered GFTs were defences, procedures, organisation and design. Working conditions were often the common denominator underlying the MEs. Among the active failures identified, a majority were classified as slips, one‐third as mistakes, and for a few no active failure or error could be determined. It was found that the tool facilitated the qualitative understanding of how the organisational weaknesses and local characteristics influence the risks. It is recommended that the tool be used regularly. We propose further development of the GFT tool. We also propose a tool to be further developed into a proactive self‐evaluation tool that would work as a complement to already incident reporting and event and risk analyses.