Patient safety webinar: The problem with 'Medical Error'

This session, presented by Prof. Paul Bowie, will challenge the wide-spread, uncritical use of ‘medical error’ and its synonyms as part of patient safety education, research and practice.  From a systems-based Human Factors perspective, the term is hugely problematic as, amongst other issues, it is alogical, ill-defined, ambiguous, misleading and unwittingly implies individual failure and encourages a blame culture.  Ultimately, this type of thinking is educationally-backward, counter-productive to a systems approach to learning, and self-harms the profession.  Surely, it’s now time to put ‘medical error’ to bed?

This is part of a series of free webinars from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

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