A brief read covering the concept of noise, pertaining to judgements. This is based on the work from Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein. From the article: · While biases in judgements have captured a lot of attention, “it has been suggested that ‘noise’ (defined as an undesirable variability in human judgements) is a highly important, yet under-recognised… Continue reading Why do doctors make poor decisions? Spotlighting ‘noise’ as an under-recognised source of error in clinical practice
Tag: medical-error
Forgiveness as morally serious response to errors in healthcare: A narrative review
An interesting and recent discussion paper from Sidney Dekker, exploring forgiveness as a ‘morally serious response’ to incidents, as opposed to retributive approaches. Tl;dr: · “while retribution addresses certain ethical concerns, it is incomplete and can be counterproductive, particularly for patient safety and organizational learning” · “Systems that focus primarily on individual blame risk fostering… Continue reading Forgiveness as morally serious response to errors in healthcare: A narrative review
The harms of promoting ‘Zero Harm’
This brief editorial discussed some challenges to zero harm approaches (‘absolute safety’) in healthcare. I particularly liked how the author argued that not only is zero harm not attainable, in an absolute sense, but “is unknowable”. Some points: · The authors encourage shifting away from ‘absolute safety’ “towards doing a better job of actively managing risk,… Continue reading The harms of promoting ‘Zero Harm’
SafetyInsights.org 