The members of Basi, the Federal Working Group for Safety and Health at Work, have now met at Messe Düsseldorf for their working conference. Plans for the A+A Congress 2025 were discussed and many new ideas and formats on the topic of occupational safety and health were discussed and considered. Prof. Dr. rer. pol. Thomas Mühlbradt, Professor of Work and Engineering Psychology at the FOM University of Applied Sciences for Economics & Management in Aachen, was invited as a guest. His topic: Safety II – an approach to safety at work that focuses on the causes of predominantly positive treatment outcomes. Expert Prof. Mühlbrath explained the development of methods, theories and models since 1900.

A central point of the presentation was complexity, which is seen as the enemy of security. Mühlbrath explained that resilience engineering (RE) is linked to the resilience of people in times of crisis. RE aims to make socio-technical systems successful under variable conditions and to strengthen the capabilities to achieve this. He asked important questions such as: “What makes a socio-technical system resilient?” or “How do we become resilient in such a system?” and explained the difference between Safety I and Safety II: While Safety I aims to minimize the number of undesirable events, Safety II aims to maximize the number of successful outcomes.

RE approaches such as “work as imagined vs. work as done” were discussed. An example from the healthcare sector illustrated how the medication process when discharging patients is defined in national guidelines in the Netherlands, but often looks different in reality.
Prof. Mühlbrath emphasized that safety is more than the absence of errors. He introduced the concept of Safety II debriefing, in which actions that helped are analyzed and questions are asked about what guided the actions. This is intended to contribute to action competence and promote a rethink among those involved.

The presentation was followed by a lively discussion with the audience. There was general enthusiasm for the idea of focusing more on success than on mistakes – similar to salutogenesis. The approach should be: Learn from good marriages instead of failed ones. It is about asking what partners in good marriages do to master everyday life. In addition, the Japanese concept of “Gemba” was discussed, which involves talking to the people who go through certain processes every day. Prof. Mühlbrath emphasized the need for local expertise. He concluded by pointing out that there is still some catching up to do in terms of science and transfer in German-speaking countries. Resilience engineering is often unknown, although there are projects and field trials. He mentioned the oil and gas industry and civil aviation as areas in which Safety II is already being applied.

Published in August 2024:
Mühlbradt / Schröder / Speer
Safety-II: New approaches to patient safety
Strategies, methods and practical experience
Springer, 19,99 Euro

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-44636-9