Qualitative analysis of factors leading to clinical incidents.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the common themes leading or contributing to clinical incidents in a UK teaching hospital.

Design/methodology/approach: A root-cause analysis was conducted on patient safety incidents. Commonly occurring root causes and contributing factors were collected and correlated with incident timing and severity.

Clinical incident reporting: wrong time, wrong place.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to generate a debate regarding the value of incident reporting in the UK.

Design/methodology/approach: This paper critiques the dominant approach to patients in the UK.

Findings: It is suggested that the reliability of health care processes would need to substantially improve before an incident reporting system can have a meaningful impact on patient safety.

The current approach to human error and blame in the NHS.

There is a large body of research to suggest that serious errors are widespread throughout medicine. The traditional response to these adverse events has been to adopt a 'person approach' - blaming the individual seen as 'responsible'. The culture of medicine is highly complicit in this response.

Antenatal screening for HIV: time to embrace change.

In August 1999 the Government set a national objective of reducing the numbers of children acquiring human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection from their mothers by 80%. The key policy change towards achieving this objective was that HIV testing was to be recommended as a routine and integral part of antenatal care. The UK has fallen behind other Western industrialized countries in the uptake of antenatal testing and reduction in mother-to-child transmission.