A Socio-Cultural Perspective on Patient Safety

Specialists in patient health from health care management, business, and other fields examine facets of health care organization and delivery that are sometimes marginal to mainstream patient safety theory and methodologies, in order to offer insights into the socio-cultural and organizational context of patient safety. They cover patients and publics, clinical practice, technology, knowledge sharing, and learning. The conclusion looks at gaps and future directions for research. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Dr Emma Rowley is a senior research fellow at the University of Warwick UK. Emma's work combines theoretical arguments from medical sociology, science and technology studies and organizational studies in investigating the translation and utilization of innovative medical technologies in a number of health care contexts. She is particularly interested in how patient safety is negotiated when technologies and guidelines are introduced into practice. Professor Justin Waring is Professor of Health Systems and Policy at the Nottingham University Business School. His research seeks to develop theoretical and methodological synthesis across social science disciplines to better understand clinical risk and organizational learning. This includes a study on the implementation of incident reporting, an ethnographic study of the threats to patient safety in the operating theatre, a real-time study of accident investigation, an evaluation of electronic prescribing in primary care and a mixed-methods study of learning across organizational and occupational boundaries in new clinical settings.