The gold major released its 16th annual sustainability report this week assessing the company's environmental and social performance for 2017.
It did not meet its 2017 total reportable injury frequency rate (TRIFR) aim of 0.32 but said its result of 0.35 was a 12.5% reduction from 2016 and Barrick's safest year on record.
However Dushnisky said this result was marred by the tragic deaths of Eulogio Gutierrez at the Hemlo mine in Canada and Williams Garrido at the Pascua-Lama project in Chile.
"Our expectation is for every person to go home safe and healthy every day. That we did not meet this goal is unacceptable," he said in the report summary.
Barrick's aims for 2018 include no fatalities, zero severe environmental incidents and zero severe incidents involving local communities at sites it operates.
It said some Barrick sites experienced "minor community-related incidents" in 2017 such as road blockades and had reported its third cyanide-related incident in 18 months last year at Veladero in Argentina.
The company had said it was working to improve the Valedero operations in the previous year's report.
Dushnisky said Barrick was working with its new joint venture partner Shandong to improve Veladero's performance and regain the trust and confidence of community and government partners.
The company developed a climate change policy last year and intends to produce its first Climate Change Report and Water Report in 2018.
It said it paid US$1.12 billion in taxes and royalties to governments in 2017 as part of more than $5.1 billion contributed to the economies in countries it operated in.
It contributed more than $5.2 billion in 2016.