Affiliations: [a] Professor, Center of Excellence for Occupational Health Engineering, Occupational Health and Safety Research Center, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan, Iran
| [b] Associate Professor, Center of Excellence for Occupational Health Engineering, Occupational Health and Safety Research Center, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan, Iran
| [c] Associate Professor, Modeling of Non communicable Diseases Research Center, Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan, Iran
| [d] Occupational Health and Safety Research Center, Department of Occupational Health, School of Public Health, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan, Iran
Correspondence:
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Address for correspondence: Mohsen Mahdinia, Occupational Health and Safety Research Center, Department of Occupational Health, School of Public Health, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, P.O. Box 4171-65175, Hamadan, Iran, Tel.: +98 813 838 1645; E-mail: mohsen.mahdinia@yahoo.com.
Abstract: BACKGROUND:Finding the best practices for accident prevention is possible by identifying the influential factors affecting accident occurrence and their interactions as well as implementing corrective actions for the root cause factors. OBJECTIVE:This study was aimed to determine the cause-effect relationships and the interaction of the influential factors affecting accident occurrence and determine the critical root factors. METHODS:This study was carried out based on the opinions of a panel of experts and used the fuzzy DEMATEL method. RESULTS:The results showed that “organization safety attitude”, “safety communication”, “work and safety training” and “safe design of systems” are root cause variables. Also, “work and safety knowledge” and “experience in the job” are individual cause variables. CONCLUSIONS:Organizational factors and some of individual variables are the critical factors that affect the occurrence of accidents. Therefore, corrective actions for accident prevention should primarily focus on the correction of these variables.
