Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Workshop

I have an oppurtunity to attend the above workshop on Wednesday, 13 August 2008, conducted by one of our Board of Directors Dr Kok, Consultant Paediatrician of Puteri Specialist Hospital, Johor. Dr Kok was assisted by Ms Julie and Madam Annie. This workshop was conducted for the first time for all HOS (Head of Service) of Kuching Specialist Hospital. Last year a workshop on Clinical Risk Assessment and Management was conducted by Tuan Hj Abdul Wahab who is KPJ Risk Management Director cum our Executive Director.

The purpose of RCA is to find the flaws and loopholes in the system that create an incident either in the form of near-missed or sentinel events. So the first step in RCA is Incident Reporting. With every incident reported, we need to find out its Care Management Problem (CMP). Using fish bone method and brain storming session we need to find out what are the contributing factors to this problem. After prioritised the main contributing factors, then we find the solutions which we called as Risk Reduction Action Plan. 

Being trained in occupational health and safety, I found this workshop as a excellence oppurtunity for me to enrich my knowledge in risk management.

RISK ASSEESMENT IN OSH

Risk Assessment in Occupational Safety and Health is about identifying the hazards and determine our exposure and consequence to that hazard. Determine the exposure to the existence hazard is the first step in its risk assessment. What is your and other workers' exposure to the hazards : daily, weekly, monthly or occasionally. Then you consider what is the CONSEQUENCE of that hazard and what is its PROBABLITY. The CONSEQUENCE can be No injury, Minor injury, Moderate injury and Severe injury even Fatality. The probability of the consequence can be determined from the record or database of your workplace or other workplace, it is either probably, possibly, unlikely or rare.
Some Risk Registered System assigned the value to the Exposure level and Consequence to make it looks quantitative, therefore the RISK will be the product of: Exposure X Consequence.This quantitative value formed what we called Risk Matrix.
From the Risk Assessment we decide whether the RISK is acceptable or not. ALL RISK that result in FATALITY, DAMAGE to property and environment are not acceptable.
Either the risk is acceptable or not, you have to do something to reduce the risk as practicable as possible, this step is called CONTROL MEASURE or RISK MANAGEMENT.
The above is the simplest way I can explain on what is risk assessment and risk management.

RISK ASSESSMENT IS MEASURING THE EXPOSURE TO HAZARD

All workplaces have health and safety hazard, the only difference is the type of the hazard. Although hazard can brings harm but without exposure to the hazard, the harm is not significance. So, how much exposure do you have to the hazard, is the main question in managing safety and health at workplace.
The steps taken to measure this exposure to the hazard is called risk assessment in OSH terminology. So risk assessment is a proactive steps to identify the hazard and its exposure to the workers.
The questions ask in health and safety risk assessment are :
1. What is the hazard?
2. Who are exposed to the hazard?
3. How much is the exposure?
4. What is the consequence if hazard released its harm during this expsoure?
5. Is the risk significant?
6. Are the control measures adequate to prevent the conseqeunces of the hazard?
I will give the anwer to the above questions in my next posting... stay tune