Work Place Safety Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Work Place Safety - Essay Example Therefore, human resource personnel together with the management ought to formulate and implement action plans to help address these issues. This paper explicates workplace safety issues in healthcare, and specific HR role in assuring safety. This paper further focuses on safety issues unique to healthcare, how HR enters into safety issues with their clinicians, and case studies of hospitals that have successful safety projects. Improving workplace safety in health care organizations has been a global challenge affecting both industrialized and third world countries. Each and every aspect of health could potentially put the safety of health providers and their clients at risk. For instance, the fact that health care providers deal with patients who sometimes present themselves with communicable disease means that they have a higher risk of acquiring the infections. According to the United States Department of Labor (2010), 653,000 incidents relating to harm or occupational diseases were account in 2010. These incidents in healthcare were higher when compared to other areas of the economy. In an effort to reduce these incidents, HR ought to work hand in hand with clinicians. Before explicating HR issues relating to workplace safety, it is important to define safety and workplace safety in the context of healthcare. A definition of safety cited by Hughes and Ferrett (2010, p. 2) denote safety as "The protection of people from physical injury". The meaning of workplace safety is explicated by Hughes and Ferrett (2010) through a definition of work-related ill health. In elucidating the definition in laymans terms, work-related ill health can be referred to as diseases resulting from or prompted by processes characteristic of healthcare organizations Jong et al (2014) posits that a healthcare provider can acquire special infections such as