Official policy-making bodies and experts in medical error have called for a shift in perspective to a blame-free culture within medicine, predicated on the basis that errors are largely attributable to systems rather than individuals. However, little is known about how the lived experience of blame in medical care relates to prospects for such a shift. In this essay we explore the benefits and...

Simplifying to the point of blaming limits learning and the ability to prevent similar occurrences in the future. Often, the characteristics of the blame culture are very subtle and what appears to be valuable work is actually a subtle sign of the blame game. Leaders must change the language to a proactive, future preventative state rather than focusing on the past and looking for single causes...

the absence of compassion, argues the author, is not the cause of healthcare failures but rather a symptom of deeper systemic failures. the clinical encounter arouses strong emotions of anxiety, fear, and anger in patients which are often projected onto the clinicians. attempts to protect clinicians through various bureaucratic devices and depersonalization of the patient, constitute as menzies...

This paper examines the production of risk and blame discourses during the 2003 SARS epidemic and responses to those messages in New York City's Chinatown, a community stigmatized during the SARS epidemic despite having no SARS cases. The study consisted of 6 weeks participant observation and 37 semi-structured, open-ended interviews with community members. Stigmatizing discourses from the late...

0022-1031/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Inc. A doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.10.007 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (N.J. Fast). When people blame others for their mistakes, they learn less and perform worse. This problem is magnified when blame becomes embedded in the shared culture of groups and organizations. Yet, little is known about whether—and, if so, how—the propen...