Question

Ogelbay Hospital is updating its risk management program. It is currently at the risk determination step, using the qualitative approach.

Ogelbay Hospital is located in a flood plain. The facility has not had flooding in the past two years, but the nearby river overflows its banks every year. Although the city has discussed building a floodwall that would protect the hospital from the river, this is an expensive proposition. As a result, the only protection it has received up to this point is from good-hearted residents of the city who build a sandbag wall when there is a threat. When the facility had been flooded in the past, it had not flooded above three inches on the first floor. There is no basement.

The first floor of the hospital houses the lobby and patient registration; cafeteria and food services; business office; gift shop; administrative offices; and physical therapy and speech therapy. When making its risk determination related to external flooding, the risk management team decided that the risk of flood damage to the first floor of the facility is extremely likely. Due to the location of much of the equipment, supplies, and patient information (measures have been taken to elevate as many items as possible), the risk management team decided that the severity of flood damage to the first floor would be moderate.

1. Oglebay Hospital is at the risk determination step. How many steps of a risk analysis has it already completed (list each step completed)?
2. Two factors are considered for each threat using the qualitative approach. What are the two factors?
3. For each threat that is identified, the two factors that you identified in Question 2 are rated. What are the levels of ratings called AND what value would you assign to each rating based on the information given?
4. Combining the two scores that you have assigned under the qualitative approach, assign a value to the flooding risk at Oglebay Hospital.
5. What do you believe are the positive and negative aspects of the qualitative approach to risk determination? Why?

Answer 1

Ans) Steps of Risk assessment:

Step 1: Identify hazards, i.e. anything that may cause harm.

Employers have a duty to assess the health and safety risks faced by their workers. Your employer must systematically check for possible physical, mental, chemical and biological hazards.

This is one common classification of hazards:

Physical: e.g. lifting, awkward postures, slips and trips, noise, dust, machinery, computer equipment, etc.
Mental: e.g. excess workload, long hours, working with high-need clients, bullying, etc. These are also called 'psychosocial' hazards, affecting mental health and occurring within working relationships.
Chemical: e.g. asbestos, cleaning fluids, aerosols, etc.
Biological: including tuberculosis, hepatitis and other infectious diseases faced by healthcare workers, home care staff and other healthcare professionals.
Step 2: Decide who may be harmed, and how.

Identifying who is at risk starts with your organisation's own full- and part-time employees. Employers must also assess risks faced by agency and contract staff, visitors, clients and other members of the public on their premises.

Employers must review work routines in all the different locations and situations where their staff are employed. For example:

Home care supervisors must take due account of their client's personal safety in the home, and ensure safe working and lifting arrangements for their own home care staff.
In a supermarket, hazards are found in the repetitive tasks at the checkout, in lifting loads, and in slips and trips from spillages and obstacles in the shop and storerooms. Staff face the risk of violence from customers and intruders, especially in the evenings.
In call centres, workstation equipment (i.e. desk, screen, keyboard and chair) must be adjusted to suit each employee.
Employers have special duties towards the health and safety of young workers, disabled employees, nightworkers, shiftworkers, and pregnant or breastfeeding women.

Step 3: Assess the risks and take action.

This means employers must consider how likely it is that each hazard could cause harm. This will determine whether or not your employer should reduce the level of risk. Even after all precautions have been taken, some risk usually remains. Employers must decide for each remaining hazard whether the risk remains high, medium or low.

Step 4: Make a record of the findings.

Employers with five or more staff are required to record in writing the main findings of the risk assessment. This record should include details of any hazards noted in the risk assessment, and action taken to reduce or eliminate risk.

This record provides proof that the assessment was carried out, and is used as the basis for a later review of working practices. The risk assessment is a working document. You should be able to read it. It should not be locked away in a cupboard.

Step 5: Review the risk assessment.

A risk assessment must be kept under review in order to:

Ensure that agreed safe working practices continue to be applied (e.g. that management's safety instructions are respected by supervisors and line managers); and take account of any new working practices, new machinery or more demanding work targets.

- Performing a risk analysis includes considering the possibility of adverse events caused by either natural processes, like severe storms, earthquakes or floods, or adverse events caused by malicious or inadvertent human activities.

- The purpose of qualitative risk analysis is to:
Identity (or mark) risks for further analysis.
The risk which is not marked for further analysis, it identifies actions for them based on the combined effects of the probability of occurrence and impact on project objectives.
In other words, after qualitative analysis, you can do quantitative analysis. There is no need to do a quantitative analysis of each risk. You do this analysis only for those risks you mark for further analysis by the Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis process.

The purpose of quantitative risk analysis is to identify the “effect of identified risks on overall project objectives.” It quantifies the risk exposure and determines the size of cost and schedule contingencies.