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Evaluation of Health and Safety Incidents: The Search For Systemic Causes and Solutions
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| Presenter(s):
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| Katherine King, University of Michigan, krking@umich.edu
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| Judith Daltuva, University of Michigan, jdal@umich.edu
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| Abstract:
Most occupational accidents are attributable to two types of conditions: deviations which are events that exist for a relatively short duration (seconds, minutes, days) and determining factors which are more systemic conditions in the work environment that tend to be stable over extended periods of time (weeks, months, years.) Under the facilitation of the University of Michigan, a joint skilled trades-management safety culture action research team at a large United Automobile Workers represented automotive facility evaluated a health and safety incident. Using an in-depth method developed by Kjellan and Larsen (1981), the team identified determining factors at the physical/technical, organizational/ economic, and social/individual levels. The methodology helped to broaden the team's perspective from a focus on worker behavior to more systemic contributions to workplace safety. The group identified several potential opportunities for positive interventions, many which were implemented over the course of the first year of the project.
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Organizational Assessment for Finding the Right Mode of Human-Robot Interaction
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| Presenter(s):
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| Se Jin Heo, University of Minnesota, heoxx005@umn.edu
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| Jim Brown, University of Minnesota, brown014@umn.edu
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| Abstract:
I am proposing to conduct a qualitative study on medical staffs in a hospital where surgical robots are used. The emphasis will be on the lived experience of nurses, technicians, and surgeons in a hospital equipped with the surgical robot. Central to the research agenda will be an organizational assessment of the cultural change for innovation in health care service regarding the use of new technology. I will first access the readiness to change of three groups (nurses, technicians, and surgeons) on the subject of the use of new technology. Besides, in order to investigate the cultural change for innovation, I will focus on observing a hospital’s error management culture in terms of both its tolerance for risk taking or failures and its training/intervention strategies to reduce errors. How the hospital deals with medical errors arising from the new technology is strongly related to medical staffs’ stress management because the way of treating medical errors cannot help influencing the attitude of medical staffs about innovation. How well or badly medical staffs cope with the new technology will strongly influence the quality of patient care as well as medical staffs’ stress-related health.
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