Joint health and safety committee education and the value of bipartite cooperation in the healthcare sector in British Columbia, Canada.

In 1999, in British Columbia, Canada, the healthcare workforce, healthcare employers and unions partnered to develop the Occupational Health and Safety Agency for Healthcare (OHSAH), a bipartite (labor-management)-governed organization with a mandate to implement evidence-based programs to reduce injury rates in health care. Within a year of its establishment, OHSAH began delivery of a province-wide joint committee education and development (JCED) program. A telephone survey after six months showed that the training program had modestly increased the establishment of new programs and had significantly increased positive health and safety behaviors and quality of JC functioning. The spirit of bipartite collaboration fostered by this and other OHSAH programs has been hugely successful at reducing injuries, time loss, and cost, and should be promoted.