Whether you are a doctor, nurse, student, or otherwise interested reader, the stories here will help you to understand how medicine works and how medical error can happen. The lifelong process of learning that is a medical career requires healthcare workers to find a way to live through these setbacks without either becoming too adept at putting them 'down to experience' and forgetting their social significance, or 'burning out' and leaving medicine.
The stories and discussions here present detailed narratives, analyses, and reflections on medical errors through actions, omissions, and misunderstandings. They offer a uniquely honest perspective on the social implications of medical error and will enable healthcare workers at all levels to analyse and learn from it without losing sight of its impact.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
General Notes: Confidentiality
Glossary
1. Deeds: Mistaken Actions and Reactions
2. Words: Failures in Communication
3. Skin: Resilience
4. Infamy: On Judgement and Punishment
Summing Up
Endnotes
Index
Biography
Philip Berry MBChB, MD, FRCP is a consultant physician and gastroenterologist at St Thomas Hospital, London, UK.
'This book is excellent for healthcare workers of all disciplines and specialties to ponder. Most books on medical errors either provide medical-legal advice about how to avoid error and change systems, or grim muckraking designed to scare people. This book is more of a reflective text that will be useful for small group settings or journal clubs.'
-Matthew Loftus, MD, AIC Litein Hospital-Kenya
