November Technical Webinar/Meeting

  • November Technical Meeting
     November 6, 2020
     11:30 am - 1:00 pm

Jennifer Serne – Better Accident Investigations Through Storytelling 

Accident investigation reports often read like a tragicomedy of poor decision making, leaving investigators scratching their heads over how someone could possibly be so stupid! However, when those involved in the accident are more intensely questioned, they often report that those very stupid decisions felt very right the time. For the investigator, making sense of these so-called stupid decisions is vital to discovering the latent factors and attitudes at play in the accident sequence. In this break-out session, we will explore how telling the accident story from the perspective of those involved can allow investigations to be more useful for the promotion of accident prevention.

Session Objectives 

The session will cover:

  • How people make decisions and how decision making is involved in accident causation.
  • How the relationship between workers and your organization’s systems, processes, and programs effects their decisions.
  • Better questions to ask than repetitive “why’s” to get at the worker’s full accident story.
  • How to use the story of an accident to make a lasting impression on employees and communicate preventative actions in a way that sticks.

Jennifer Serne is an Assistant Professor in the Safety Health Management program at Central Washington University.  She teaches classes covering Hazardous Materials Management, Fire Safety, Incident Investigation, Emergency Response, Construction and Manufacturing Safety, Safety Analysis Systems, and Ergonomics and Human Factors. Previously, she worked for 20 years in the safety industry in research safety, pharmaceutical safety, radiation safety, and emergency response and was the lead inspector of medical and research facilities using radioactive materials in Washington State. She has also been an independent fatality investigator, serving various clients in 36 states and 6 countries. She has a Masters in Safety Science from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and is working towards her Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology and Human Factors.

This webinar will be hosted through WebEx. Registration for the event will not automatically send you the meeting invitation details. We will send those invites Monday and Thursday evenings the week of the meeting for those individuals that have registered on this website. We encourage you to log in to the meeting 5 to 10 minutes early to familiarize yourself with the functionality and ensure the meeting properly loads on your computer. For navigating the WebEx interface, please view this reference guide.

We have not and are not charging a fee for our monthly webinars. The money gained from our monthly technical meetings is added to our student scholarship funds. We have added a ticket in $5 increments to this and future meetings for donating to our student scholarship fund. Our students would greatly appreciate any contributions you can make!

Venue:   Webinar

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