Nurturing Intellectual Warriors: A Nationalistic Approach

Man enjoys his intellect more than an animal enjoys its senses. Thirst for knowledge is inherent in man and no one likes to be ignorant. Knowledge alone can remove ignorance. Sir Julian Huxley, renowned biologist defines the new goal of evolution at the human level as refinement of intellect which gives fulfilment. It is easy to train and purify our impure intellect, if we know the different aspects and functions of Buddhi. The pure intellect has many characteristics such as – Alertness, Discrimination, Determination, Subtlety, Steadiness, Maturity, Vastness, Simplicity, Sharpness, and Positivity. The intense and purer the intellect (Buddhi), the greater the perfection attained. That country is great which can produce more intellectual people in different fields. Intellectual strength (buddhibalam) alone can play a vital role in a nation’s progress. We need to process our psychic energy into - creative, constructive and making for happiness and all-round welfare. This kind of development is what makes education a blessing to society. That is the goal of India in our present condition when we are developing into a constructive, developed nation.

Evaluating Fatigue, Stress, Workload and Situation Awareness Among Electrical Substation Construction Workers

Many accidents occur due to various factors when undertaking construction projects. One of the most important achievements when undertaking a construction project is to accomplish the project without major accidents. This paper studies the effect of stress, fatigue and workload on construction contract worker in term of their safety performance results using the Situation Awareness Rating Technique (SART), with reference to how it relates to the root causes of accidents. Investigating the factors associated with accidents helps to identify and minimize the associated mistakes or causes and reduce or avoid accidents and improve safety performance in construction projects. Data were collected using a SART survey of employee of 18 contractors working on construction of electrical substations in the western area of Saudi Arabia. It was found that most accidents occurred at the worker level because of their lack of awareness and training. It is apparent that SART affects the safety performance of contractors and it varies with the position, age and experience of workers. To implement a safe working environment free of accidents, it is necessary to improve all job levels according to their insufficient area and activate a full safety management system with periodic reviews to improve it and make it more effective.

Safety Climate and Culture Review: A Case Study of Water and Power Project

Systematic management of occupational safety and health (OSH) issues requires attention in many aspects like regulatory, technical, organizational and managerial. Approaching OSH from an organizational culture perspective can also facilitate achieving sustainable improvements in organizational OSH performance. OSH culture helps in seeing and organizing safety from different perspectives and should not be reduced to a matter of culture only. The knowledge, information and data gathered is expected to be very useful in the process of improving OSH-related procedures, practices and policies, eventually leading to enhanced OSH performance. This paper attempts to describe a cultural approach towards understanding organizational OSH. It will help the readers, professionals, authorities, and policy makers in understanding OSH from a cultural point of view, and how to assess this OSH culture as part of the of organizational improvement process. The aim is to disseminate latest information on this complex topic, trying to build a bridge between practice and research. The scientific literature shows these two terms, safety climate and safety culture, are often interchangeable, but they are distinct but related concepts. The word "safety culture" is a complex and persistent feature reflecting fundamental assumptions, expectations, norms and values, which are also represented by societal culture while "safety climate" best pronounces attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of employees classically measured by surveys and observations. Safety culture measurement requires detailed investigation of how members in an organization interact to form a shared view of safety. This paper explores the ideas of an organization’s safety climate and culture for the purpose of determining which is more advantageous for accurately describing a "state of safety”. Preliminary results of a case study from a water and power project from Saudi Arabia has been added.

Owner Project Safety Leadership and Explosives Management in a Construction Project in Kashmir

This is research is focused on the evaluation of Owner Engineer perceptions and its impacts on Explosives management practices and developments related to an Engineering, Procurement and Construction Contract (EPC) Tunnel Construction Project in Kashmir using an interpretive methodology.The scope for this research was the Owner engineer project team. The population of interest was made up of 13 senior engineers, encompassing a multi-site EPC Tunnel Construction Project. Eleven (11) senior engineers were carefully targeted as a designed sample size.The research outcomes consisted of three (3) Main Themes - Site Safety; Explosives Management and Security Issues and fourteen (14) sub-themes, with 387 dialogue targets.The paper addresses a variety of major issues resulting from the analysis of narrative data relating to Owner project safety leaderships and raises determinations of the implications for managing safety at the project sites and in the wider community.

Assessment of Occupational Safety Practices Among Medical Laboratory Staff in Governmental Hospitals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Background: workers in laboratories are faced with many occupational risks at work and their health and safety may be severely jeopardized if adequate preventive protective measures are not taken. Objectives: to assess the level of occupational safety practices among laboratory staff in governmental hospitals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Method: It was a cross sectional descriptive study among 107 laboratory staff, and 28 labs. Data was collected by a self-administered validated structured questionnaire and observation checklist, which were developed, and validated by us using guidelines on universal work precautions and based on previous studies. Results: Overall, there was a positive knowledge of, and attitude towards, occupational safety practices among medical laboratory staff. Nationality and age group were the only two variables that were significantly correlated with occupational safety practices. Almost of the occupational safety practices subscales were followed in the assessed subscales, except for certain parameters including mainly personal protective equipment’s and electrical safety. Conclusion: Overall, a positive knowledge of, and attitude towards, occupational safety practices among medical laboratory staff was reported.

Safety Climate in the Indian Manufacturing Industry - An Exploratory Study

Research indicates safety climate is used to measure the safety of an organization. However, very few studies examine the status of safety climate in the manufacturing sector. This paper aims to explicate the status of safety climate in the Indian manufacturing sector. Four hundred fifty employees from 13 manufacturing industries in Karnataka were sampled. Perception data about the safety in their respective plants was collected using self-reporting questionnaires. The data was subjected to factor analysis, and Partial Least Squares regression was run to determine the nature of the relationships the constructs shared with Safety Climate.

Exploring School Foodservice Directors’ Intentions to Implement Farm-To-School Procurement Methods Considering Food Safety Practices

This study explored the intentions of foodservice directors' (FSD) who oversee Farm-to-School (F2S) programs to implement alternative procurement methods that better account for food safety practices. A web-based questionnaire was distributed to 864 California school FSDs with 136 (15.7%) usable surveys returned. Findings revealed that although FSDs understand the importance of food safety training and have confidence in their ability to manage produce safety practices, they express little intention to change their procurement practices. This finding might indicate a need for more resources and supportive policies.

Assessment of the Quality of Job Descriptions of Safety Jobs in the Saudi Companies

The poor occupational safety and health (OSH) performance of many sectors in Saudi Arabia necessitates studying the reasons behind this performance. While other studies addressed many potential reasons, the objective of the current study is to investigate the quality of job descriptions of the safety jobs in Saudi Arabia. A sample of 69 job descriptions for several safety job titles and from different industrial or service sectors were analyzed to discover the important factors that may have an impact. The results revealed that there are some gaps in the design of the sampled job descriptions' components, particularly in the job information and the required qualifications for the jobs. The quality of job descriptions varied from one industrial sector to another, with oil & gas, petrochemicals and utilities sectors being in the top, and manufacturing, education/training, construction, and service/retail/distribution in the bottom in terms of job descriptions quality. There was no clear relationship between the safety job title and the quality of job descriptions. However, the required experience had positive impact on the quality of job descriptions of safety jobs. It is recommended that further studies covering a larger sample size of job descriptions to be conducted to obtain results that can be generalized and utilized in setting proper policies to improve the practices of the Saudi companies in the design of job descriptions of safety jobs and, hence, hiring the appropriate safety professionals.

Accuracy of Discriminating between Similar Drug Names by Nurses: Effect of Finger-pointing on Error Prevention

Discriminating between similar drug names accurately is important in order to prevent medication error. To facilitate accurate discrimination, performing finger-pointing toward drug names to recognize them is recommended in Japan for healthcare workers. We investigate whether nurses would accurately recognize the difference between target and similar drug names and whether finger-pointing would lead to error prevention for drug names by using a choice reaction time task. Participants observed six drug names with or without pointing with the index finger and determined as quickly and accurately as possible whether the target drug name was present. Targets were real drug names, although distractors were pseudo names so as to strictly manipulate the degree of similarity. The results showed that error rates were significantly higher for nurses than for students. Due to their familiarity with the drug names, the nurses could misrecognize the pseudo words as target drug names when a quick response was requested. We also found that nurses did not receive a benefit from finger-pointing. Moreover, finger-pointing may have been inadequate to lead to accurate recognition of complex stimuli, such as drug names.

Implementation of Chemical Health Risk Assessment (CHRA) program at Chemical Laboratories of a University

The use of chemicals in academic/research laboratories is obvious which need proper university’s safety management. It is the prime responsibility of university top management to protect laboratory staff from chemical health risks during their work. This study elaborate a methodology for the implementation of a Chemical Health Risk Assessment (CHRA) programme in a University’s chemical laboratories. The objective of this CHRA programme is to identify and evaluate the risk of chemical exposure among laboratory staff. The qualitative observation of CHRA programme identified two categories of risk, one is a significant risk but already adequately controlled could increase in future, second is risk significant now, and not adequately controlled. Based on the conclusion of CHRA programme proactive suggestion were made to reduce the risks of chemical exposure among laboratory staff in the selected Saudi university. This study can be useful to implement CHRA programme in chemical laboratories of a university to assess risk of chemical exposure and required control measures for the protection of laboratory staff.