Proactive approaches to safety management Thought paper

Professor Erik Hollnagel explores the importance of proactive approaches to safety management. He argues that safety management must look ahead and not only try to avoid things going wrong, but also try to ensure that they go right.

At the Health Foundation, we are working to identify, test and demonstrate ways to manage risk in systems of care, and reduce the number of failures. We are conducting research and running improvement programmes in order to provide vital evidence and learning that can be shared across the health service.

Health Foundation thought papers are the author’s own views. We would like to thank Professor Hollnagel for his work, which we hope will stimulate ideas, reflection and discussion.