Accountability, organisational learning and risks to patient safety in England: conflict or compromise?

Abstract

This article examines the current risk regulation regime, within the English National Health Service (NHS), by investigating the two, sometimes conflicting, approaches to risk embodied within the field of policies towards patient safety. The first approach focuses on promoting accountability and is built on legal principles surrounding negligence and competence. The second approach focuses on promoting learning from previous mistakes and near-misses, and is built on the development of a ‘safety culture’. Previous work has drawn attention to problems associated with risk-based regulation when faced with the dual imperatives of accountability and organisational learning. The article develops this by considering whether the NHS patient safety regime demonstrates the coexistence of two different risk regulation regimes, or merely one regime with contradictory elements. It uses the heuristic device of ‘institutional logics’ to examine the coexistence of and interrelationship between ‘organisational learning’ and ‘accountability’ logics driving risk regulation in health care.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13698575.2011.575454
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Sociology and Policy
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Aston Centre for Europe
Additional Information: This is an electronic version of an article published in Dodds, Anneliese and Kodate, Naonori (2011). Accountability, organisational learning and risks to patient safety in England: conflict or compromise? Health, risk and society, 13 (4), pp. 327-346. Health, risk and society is available online at http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=1369-8575&volume=13&issue=4&spage=327
Uncontrolled Keywords: risk,accountability,organisational learning,patient safety,risk regulation,Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Publication ISSN: 1469-8331
Last Modified: 02 Jan 2024 18:33
Date Deposited: 13 Jan 2012 12:21
Full Text Link: http://www.info ... sue=4&spage=327
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2011-06
Authors: Dodds, Anneliese
Kodate, Naonori

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