Modern medicine is highly effective. It is also available to greater numbers of people than ever before, but preventable injury has been identified as a strikingly common occurrence in all aspects of modern healthcare. The term ‘epidemic of error’ has been coined. In the United States, the Institute of Medicine, acting under the National Academy of Sciences, has identified errors in healthcare as a leading cause of death and injury, comparable with that of road accidents. The precise extent of this problem is open to question, but it is beyond argument that an unacceptable number of people suffer serious harm or die as a result of ‘avoidable adverse events’. Sometimes these events are attributable to negligence. However, it is often simple human error, operating in an intrinsically hazardous system, which results in an unnecessary death or serious injury. For the person concerned, and for the person's family and friends, the consequences of a deceptively simple mistake may be a tragedy of the first order. In addition, there may also be grave implications for a doctor or nurse at whose door the blame for the accident is laid, with consequences for his or her family as well.

This book is a study of how mishaps occur and how people are blamed for them. In many areas of human activity there is a strong tendency to attribute blame for incidents which, on further investigation, may be shown not to involve any culpable conduct.