Document Type

Theses, Masters

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

Hospital administration

Publication Details

Successfully submitted for the award of Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) to the Technological University Dublin,

Abstract

Risk assessment is a method used to identify risks within an organisation. It is required by the Safety Health and Welfare at Work Act, 189 for the purpose of safety management. No one method can effectively identify all types of hazard and risks within organisations. The insufficiency of individual risk assessment techniques to generate objective data as to the level of risk, is now generally accepted as an issue in risk management. Therefore, a combination of risk assessment techniques, best suited for the organisation, could improve risk assessments. This study set out to develop and combine a number of risk assessment techniques in order to evaluate the broad spectra of hazards and risks within an organisation. Having developed this risk assessment tool, it was then applied to a health care facility. Three risk assessment techniques were employed for the purpose of this study. These were: workplace survey, (inspection of the premises), analysis of 1,365 accident/incident report forms over an 18 month period and a dedicated psychometric risk assessment technique. Each of the risk assessment techniques highlighted hazards and risks to the organisation. Together, however, they provided the health care facility with additional hazard evaluation data as well as a more detailed qualitative and quantitative description of the hazards and risks. The data generated supported the concept that in order to implement an integrated risk management system, a combination of risk assessment techniques is required to elicit and evaluate the hazard profile along a broad spectra of hazards. This study has supported the use of this risk assessment tool in the health care facility. Furthermore, the underlying concept of conjoining risk assessment techniques can be extended to other sectors requiring a risk management system.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/D72N0C

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