Errors, Medicine And The Law

Merry and McCall-Smith question the understandable, but often inappropriate, tendency to blame individuals for medical errors. They point out that the goal of safety is far better served by a sophisticated understanding of the difference between negligence and inevitable error, and by a frank recognition of just why human error occurs and how things go wrong in any complex system. Although medicine is used as the book's primary example, the points made apply equally to aviation, industrial activities, and many other fields of human endeavour.

Merry and McCall-Smith question the understandable, but often inappropriate, tendency to blame individuals for medical errors. They point out that the goal of safety is far better served by a sophisticated understanding of the difference between negligence and inevitable error, and by a frank recognition of just why human error occurs and how things go wrong in any complex system. Although medicine is used as the book's primary example, the points made apply equally to aviation, industrial activities, and many other fields of human endeavour.