Safety and health pros might learn a thing or two from the reaction of healthcare professionals, specifically physicians and nurses, to rising demands for improved patient safety after a 1999 report by the prestigious Institute of Medicine estimated 44,000-98,000 Americans die each year of medical errors.
Safety on the job is like safe driving, offered a physician when I asked him about healthcare attitudes toward patient safety. “How can you argue against it?†But what this doc particularly objected to was safety lectures that take on a tone of morality. “If you slip up or cut corners, and let’s face, we all do, though none of us certainly intend for anyone to get hurt, it’s like you’ve committed a sin,†he explained.