Risk, Safety and Clinical Practice

Health care through the lens of risk

Mike Titterton author Andy Alaszewski author Bob Heyman author Monica Shaw author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:26th Nov '09

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Risk, Safety and Clinical Practice cover

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.

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 *

ISBN: 9780198569008

Dimensions: 233mm x 156mm x 15mm

Weight: 429g

270 pages