Safety and Ethics in Healthcare: A Guide to Getting it Right

Bill Runciman is Professor of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care at the Adelaide University and Head of the Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. He founded the Australian Patient Safety Foundation in 1988, and is the current President. He has been a member of task forces which produced world patient safety standards for both Anaesthesia and Intensive Care. He was Chairman of the Safety and Quality of Practice Committee of the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists from 1992 to 2000. He has been a member of the Australian Council for Safety and Quality in Healthcare and of the Australian Health Information Council, and is joint co-ordinator of groups developing research tools and an International Patient Safety Classification for the World Alliance for Patient Safety of the World Health Organization. Alan Merry is Professor of Anaesthesiology at the University of Auckland. He chairs the Quality and Safety Committee of the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists. He is a Councillor of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists, chairs the College's Quality and Safety Committee, and has chaired its New Zealand National Committee. He co-chaired the New Zealand Medical Law Reform Group and has been president of the Auckland Medico-Legal Society. He is co-author of the books Errors, Medicine and the Law (with Alexander McCall Smith; Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Essential Perioperative Transoesophageal Echocardiography (with David Sidebotham and Malcolm Legget; Butterworth-Heinemann, 2003). Merrilyn Walton is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney. She chairs the Personal and Professional Development Theme and teaches students and clinicians about ethical practice, quality and safety. Her interests include enhancing the training environment for medical students and doctors and advocating for patients to be fully engaged in health care at every level. She was the founding Commissioner for the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission (1993-2000), and is a board member of the NSW Institute for Medical Education and Training and chairs its Prevocational Training Council.

Contents: Foreword; Preface. Part 1 What is Wrong with Healthcare: Setting the stage: an overview of healthcare; Risk and the harm caused by healthcare; Healthcare: a dysfunctional system; Naming, blaming and shaming. Part 2 Understanding the Basics: Human error and complex systems; Knowing what to do; Ethics, professional behaviour and regulation. Part 3 What to Do When Things Go Wrong: When things go wrong: looking after the people involved; When things go wrong: preventing a recurrence. Part 4 Preventing Things from Going Wrong: Getting the best out of people; Getting the best out of the system; Where to now? Appendices: Preferred terms and definitions for key safety and quality concepts; Public expenditure on healthcare in selected countries; Risk matrix; Evidence-based medicine: sources of information; International code of medical ethics; Jonsen's ethics framework; Severity assessment code (SAC); The advanced incident monitoring system (AIMS); Soft systems methodology (SSM); Sources of information for patients. Index.