Risk Assessment for Subjective Evidence-Based Ethnography Applied in High Risk Environment

Abstract

Original citation:Fauquet-Alekhine, Philippe (2016) Risk assessment for subjective evidence-based ethnography applied in high risk environment. Advances in Research, 6 (2 ABSTRACTSubjective Evidence-Based Ethnography (SEBE) is a family of methods developed for investigation in social science based on subjective audio-video recordings with a miniature video-camera usually worn at eye-level (eye-tracking techniques are included). Despite its application to the analysis of high risk professions (e.g. anesthetists, aircraft pilots, nuclear reactor pilots) and the potential additional risks it induces, no suggestions regarding these concerns and no solutions helping researchers to anticipate this kind of risks are available in the literature. Aiming at filling this gap, we undertook a study of SEBE equipment applied to the analysis of workers' activities on a nuclear power plant. The method was divided in three phases: i) observations and discussions on full scale simulators of activities undertaken by one or two workers (N=42) to characterize the consequences of the SEBE equipment, ii) bibliographic research combined with results of first phase to elaborate a risk assessment protocol, iii) analysis of its application in real operating situations (N=17). The elaborated protocol gave satisfactory results in terms of risk prevention and time application: No incident or accident occurred and the risk assessment took less than five minutes. The observations highlighted however a risk of side-effect (using SEBE equipment to justify subjects' mistake or Original Research ArticleFauquet-Alekhine; AIR, 6(2): 1-13, 2016; Article no.AIR.21597 2 failure) giving greater importance to the necessity of this sort of risk assessment protocol. To date, the protocol needs to be tested in other industrial contexts in order to be improved and/or to confirm its robustness.

Introspective interviewing for work activities: applying subjective digital ethnography in a nuclear industry case study

“…• At the beginning of the shift, the analyst exchanged with the Operations team during the shift briefing to identify who would be volunteer to be involved in the activity analysis. • Workers were informed of the aim of the study, signed an informed consent and undertook a risk assessment regarding the subcam used in real operating situation (Fauquet-Alekhine 2016b;Fauquet-Alekhine et al 2018). Then they were equipped with the subcam.…”

Training Improvement through Subjective Work Analysis: The Example of Radial Puncture

“…• Before undertaking the activity, the anesthesiologist was informed of the aim of the study so that to sign an informed consent, carried out a risk assessment (Fauquet-Alekhine, 2016b;Fauquet-Alekhine et al, 2018) regarding the use of subcam and was equipped with it (preparation phase, 5 min. ).…”

“…The activity chosen for the test was radial artery puncture (to provide a sample of blood for the arterial blood gas test for example), identified as needing improvement (as observed elsewhere: Tavakol et al, 2012;Hernández-Padilla et al, 2016a, 2016b and presenting the advantage of being simple and short, limiting the cost of the experiments.…”