Vincent and Amalberti in their excellent book Safer Healthcare, Strategies for the Real World (2016) outline three different approaches to safety in a neat comparative diagram on p. 29 You can download this wonderful text here for free (https://qi.elft.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/safer-healthcare-charles-vincent-and-rene-amalberti.pdf). The three models are comparative within the context of health care. However, the same could be… Read More Ultra-Safety is Un-Safety – SafetyRisk.net

Is there such a thing as too much safety? Absolutely. We have learned over many years from the work of: Weick (https://safetyrisk.net/weick-collection/), Amalberti (https://qi.elft.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/safer-healthcare-charles-vincent-and-rene-amalberti.pdf), Taleb (http://kgt.bme.hu/files/BMEGT30M400/Taleb_Antifragile__2012.pdf) and many on the dysfunctionality of anything ‘hyper’, that we don’t want hyper anything. We learn from these scholars that hyper-safety is not just dangerous but unachievable. The word… Read More Is Your Safety Fragile or Robust, Resilient and Adaptable?

How do you know that Safety (the Archetype) has paid a visit to a workplace? The tell-tale signs are usually writ large in signs, symbols are artefacts demonstrating ‘hyper Safety’. Hyper-Safety is what Amalberti and Taleb tell us is neither possible but also very dangerous. Usually, when we find the artefacts of a Safety visit,… Read More Have You Had That Special Safety Visit?

I’m hosting a free Social Psychology of Risk Book Club this November, and you’re invited. Over four Tuesday evenings (3, 10, 17 and 24 November, 7:30pm–8:30pm ACDT) well discuss Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and what it means for how we think about risk and make decisions. You’ll need a copy of the book and… Read More Social Psychology of Risk Book Club – Antifragile

Understanding that something can be made a fetish is common to cultural, anthropology and social psychology studies. The word ‘fetish’ simply means ‘the attribution of power to an object’. It has evolved over time to be given sexual meaning but this is not how the word is used in contexts of making symbols into simulacra.… Read More Safety Symbols as Fetishes – SafetyRisk.net