Patient Safety First : Responsive Regulation in Health Care

Each year more people die in health care accidents than in road accidents. Increasingly complex medical treatments and overstretched health systems create more opportunities for things to go wrong, and they do.

Patient safety is now a major regulatory issue around the world, and Australia has been at its leading edge. Self-regulation by professional and industry groups is now widely regarded as insufficient, and government is stepping in.

In Patient Safety First eading experts survey the governance of clinical care. Framed within a theory of responsive regulation, core regulatory approaches to patient safety are analysed for their effectiveness, including information systems, corporate and public institution governance models, the design of safe systems,

the role of medical boards, open disclosure and public inquiries.

Patient Safety First includes chapters by Bruce Barraclough, John Braithwaite, Stephen Duckett and Ian Freckleton SC. It is essential reading for all medical and legal professionals working in patient safety as well as readers in public health, health policy and governance.

Judith Healy is Associate Professor in the Regulatory Institutions Network at the Australian National University. She is co-editor of Hospitals in a Changing Europe and Accessing Health Care.

Paul Dugdale is Director of Chronic Disease Management for ACT Health and Associate Professor of Public Health at the Australian National University. He is the author of Doing Health Policy in Australia.