Just reading an interesting article regarding the increasing awareness of a culture of safety in the health care industry.  "Interventions to Improve Safety Culture" contains many parallels to what the nuclear industry found to be true, though interestingly there are no direct references to nuclear industry, or other high risk industry, studies.  A link to the article is included under General References in the References/News tab.

I thought there were several quotes that could be of interest to nuclear safety professionals.  One, ..."the challenge is to change the environment from one of crisis and blame to one of learning and improvement."  and noting that "in the past, organizations thought that if they rebuked those who made errors and provided enough training, it would address the problem."   The other is "Many errors result from an inadequate or complex system."

I would add that if training and retraining is directed only at reiterating and emphasizing safety culture norms and expectations, there could be limits to its effectiveness and may not address gaps in individuals understanding and abilities to make safety management decisions.  See our Model 3 and its guide for our approach to "saturation" of safety culture reinforcement.  The complexity of the nuclear safety management system is another reason why we believe that simulator-based practice offers benefits not available through other training syllabuses.