Organizing Patient Safety

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxiii

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2. Part I

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. Studying Patient Safety: An Introduction

      • Kirstine Zinck Pedersen

      Pages 3-31

   3. The Oral Syringe Case

      • Kirstine Zinck Pedersen

      Pages 33-42

   4. Failsafe Systems and Practical Reasoning

      • Kirstine Zinck Pedersen

      Pages 43-73

3. Part II

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 75-75

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   2. Blame and Responsibility in Patient Safety

      • Kirstine Zinck Pedersen

      Pages 77-110

   3. The Distributed Risks of Safety Management

      • Kirstine Zinck Pedersen

      Pages 111-136

   4. Learning in Patient Safety

      • Kirstine Zinck Pedersen

      Pages 137-167

   5. Stability and Change in Patient Safety

      • Kirstine Zinck Pedersen

      Pages 169-200

4. Part III

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 201-201

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   2. A Pragmatic Stance on Safety Management

      • Kirstine Zinck Pedersen

      Pages 203-226

   3. Patient Safety as Trained Dispositions and Moral Education

      • Kirstine Zinck Pedersen

      Pages 227-249

5. Back Matter

   Pages 251-279

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This book examines the organizational consequences of the recent international preoccupation with managing patient safety in the clinic. Built on presuppositions about failsafe system-design, risk elimination, and human fallibility, the patient safety programme introduces new problems and safety threats in clinical practice by devaluing practical forms of reasoning and the trained safety dispositions of clinicians. 


Developing a pragmatic and more situated stance on patient safety, Pedersen offers an alternative vocabulary that refocuses attention towards the importance of conduct, habits and experience-based learning in delivering safe care. This innovative book will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners of organization and risk studies, health, science and technology studies and the wider social and medical sciences.

• Health Care
• Nursing
• The Swiss Cheese Model
• Medical Misconduct
• International patient safety policy programme
• To Err is Human
• John Dewey
• The patient safety curriculum in medical schools
• factor-ten error
• The Root Cause Analysis

“This is a well-written and genuinely innovative book which should be of great interest to scholars and practitioners of organisation and risk studies, health, science and technology studies and the wider social and medical sciences.” (The RoSPA OS&H Journal, May, 2018) “The book is a tour de force dissection of the multiple dubious organizational assumptions on which patient safety policies and practices rest. It is an invaluable aid for anyone who is puzzled why safer patient care is so difficult to achieve.” (Charles L. Bosk, University of Pennsylvania)

“This is an important and timely book whose insights and approach resonate well beyond the confines of healthcare generally and patient safety specifically. Adopting and advocating a pragmatic stance towards fashionable modes of organizing and managing in the public sector and the conventional forms of critique that accompany them, Pedersen proffers a subtle and compelling argument that brilliantly combines practical rationality with ethical seriousness.” (Paul Du Gay, Royal Holloway, University of London)

“Mixing theory and detailed cases this book analyses the changing meanings and organizational configurations of patient safety.  Pedersen shows how the entanglement of zero-risk accountability requirements, system fantasies, and technologies of patient risk management, continuously produce unintended consequences.  As a corrective she proposes a pragmatic and learning-based approach to patient safety drawing on the work of Dewey. Organizing Patient Safety will be of great interest to a wide variety of scholars working in organization and risk studies, as well to health policy makers.” (Michael Power, London School of Economics and Political Science)

“A well-posed problem, paraphrasing Bergson, is far better than a solution provided on the backdrop of badly posed problem. This book resists the natural urge to focus on a solution when confronted with the problem of patient safety. Instead Kirstine Zinck Pedersen provides a thorough, in-depth analysis of the problems in a time where everybody is in haste to solve them, and by implication she provides a sensitive way forward. Interestingly, she does not only criticize the presumptions that are at the basis of the dominant patient safety policies, but also the available alternatives as reproducing the dichotomies from the other end of the spectrum. Instead Pedersen provides an alternative that goes beyond the binary. Moreover, her focus is not on the effect of safety programs on patients but for the health care professionals. This excellent book opens a window in your head: Enjoy the view!” (Jessica Mesman, Maastricht University)

• Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg C, Denmark

  Kirstine Zinck Pedersen

Kirstine Zinck Pedersen is Assistant Professor at the Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.