Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to examine the deep conceptual underpinnings of trust and communication breakdowns via selected health inquiries into things that go wrong using evolutionary psychology. Design/methodology/approach – This paper explains how this is carried out, and...

Purpose: Hospitals are constantly redeveloping to improve functioning and modernise the delivery of safe and high-quality care. In Australia, it is expected that different stakeholders have the opportunity to contribute to the design and planning of hospital redevelopment projects. The purpose...

Purpose: Much work about health reform and systems improvement in healthcare looks at shortcomings and universal problems facing health systems, but rarely are accomplishments dissected and analyzed internationally. The purpose of this paper is to address this knowledge gap by examining the...

Purpose: Health service effectiveness continues to be limited by misaligned objectives between policy makers and frontline clinicians. While capturing the discretion workers inevitably exercise, the concept of “street-level bureaucracy” has tended to artificially separate policy makers and...

Numerous past articles, many of which consist of idealised prescriptions for success or the occasional case study or practitioner's contribution, have commented on the role of hospital clinician‐managers. Prior work is circumscribed, however, in that it tends to be normative and a priori (how...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to draw on scientific models in conceptualising the evolutionary bases of contemporary behaviours, and make cross‐species comparisons, to account for male managerial activities in situ in health organizations. Design/methodology/approach – In the...

Purpose – Increased public awareness of clinical failure and rising levels of litigation are spurring health policy makers in industrialized countries to mandate that clinicians report and investigate clinical errors and near misses. This paper seeks to understand the value of root cause...

Purpose – Inquiries into healthcare organisations have highlighted organisational or system failure, attributed to poor responses to early warning signs. One response, and challenge, is for professionals and academics to build capacity for quality and safety research to provide evidence for...

Purpose – This paper aims to analyse the development of patient safety as a field within which patients are peripheral stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach – The authors examined the patient safety movement from the perspective of a field in which agents struggle for control over...

Purpose – This paper aims to be a theoretical examination of the role of individuals in sponsoring and facilitating effective, systemic change in organisations. Using reports of a number of high‐profile initiatives to improve patient safety, it seeks to analyse the role of individual health...