Safety charity RoSPA has launched a new guide designed to aid understanding of the principles underpinning the discourse about health and safety.
The 22-page booklet, Little Book of Big Ideas, has been written by RoSPA’s occupational safety and health policy adviser and Immediate Past President of IOSH, Dr Karen McDonnell, together with RoSPA’s partnership consultant Roger Bibbings.
The booklet has been designed in a bid to help health and safety professionals understand the complex and debated ideas at the heart of occupational health and safety.
The authors hope the guide will be used as a gateway to further reading, a handy reference guide to remind about essential terms and concepts, or as a resource to support teaching.
For experts and non-experts alike, the guide offers answers to commonly asked questions such as 'when, where, how, why, and to whom do accidents happen?' and 'what do we mean by risk and how do we assess it?'.
Speaking about the guide Dr Karen McDonnell said: “The RoSPA principle of ‘as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible’ is underpinned by those commonly-used but sometimes misunderstood terms including hazard, risk, probability, and preventability. Anyone attending a health and safety training course or reading guidance material will routinely hear the words used and often engage in debate on their meaning and applicability.
“For this reason RoSPA has produced the Little Book of Big Ideas: a ready-reckoner, a quick recap or a step into new topics. As a practitioner you can use its content to dispel health and safety myths.”
