Risk, Safety and Clinical Practice. Health Care through the Lens of Risk

About this Book

• Allows the reader to analyse risk management issues, and to critically evaluate the claims made about existing and new technologies, in an informed way
• Covers all aspects of risk relevant to a clinical setting and is closely related to decision making in the clinic
• Explores multiple stakeholder risk perspectives, particularly those of service users and carers, practitioners, the wider public and policy makers

Risk thinking is transforming the understanding, organisation and management of health care systems, and its significance is likely to increase still further over the next two decades as technological advances, for example the new genetics and the discovery of new biomedical markers, open up novel possibilities for health risk management.

Heightened societal risk consciousness, such as food panics and the debate over the MMR vaccine, co-exists, apparently paradoxically, with increased life expectancy in advanced industrial societies and increasing concern about the longer term future. At the same time, social trends are pushing health care systems towards the surveillance of populations and the targeting of groups identified as being at higher risk. All too often, service users, health professionals, policy makers and researchers draw upon a risk management framework without reflecting critically on its assumptions or limitations.

This introductory text focuses on the underlying generic issues of risk management in a health care. Aimed at health professionals, managers, educators and policy makers who are concerned with risk management, it allows the reader to analyse risk management issues, and to critically evaluate the claims made about existing and new technologies, in an informed way. It covers all aspects of risk relevant to a clinical setting and is closely related to decision making in the clinic.

Readership: Health professionals, managers, educators and policy makers who are concerned with risk management.

Reviews

"All the chapters are well written and will assist health professionals, academics and students at undergraduate and post-graduate level who grapple with challenges created by the dominance of risk assessment. Its grounding in the real world of health care helps clarify and make useful a number of complex theoretical concepts, particularly within the areas of risk categorization and conceptualization. This book succeeds in doing what it sets out to do."
- Social Policy and Administration

"The book is the only one of its kind that really focuses on risk from the inside of healthcare delivery and outside cultural/societal influences."
- Doody's Notes

"This is a smart text about a field that has become very popular in recent decades. The authors are all leading thinkers in this area and have written a book that appears to try to appeal to a wide audience of practitioner and academic...There are many more messages to be unearthed in a book packed with different ways of understanding things. So, enjoy the book! It has a great deal to offer the reader."
- Health, Risk & Society

Table of Contents

• Bob Heyman and Mike Titterton: Introduction
• 1: Bob Heyman: The concept of risk
• 2: Bob Heyman: The social construction of health risks
• 3: Bob Heyman: Values and health risks
• 4: All: Risk and probabilistic reasoning
• 5: All: Time and health risks
• 6: Andy Alaszewski: Information about health risks
• 7: Monica Shaw: Health risks and the media
• 8: Monica Shaw: The regulation of health risks
• 9: All: Health risk and the patient safety agenda

Author Information

Bob Heyman, Professor of Health Care Risk Management, University of Huddersfield and Emeritus Professor of Health Care Research, City University, London, Andy Alaszewski, Professor of Health Studies and Director of the Centre for Health Services Studies, University of Kent, Monica Shaw, Emeritus Professor in Social Sciences, Northumbria University, and Mike Titterton, Chair, Health & Life for Everyone (International Health Charity registered in Scotland)