Merry and McCall Smith's Errors, Medicine and the Law (2^nd Ed., Revised edition) Cambridge Bioethics and Law Series

There is an understandable tendency or desire to attribute blame when patients are harmed by their own healthcare. However, many cases of iatrogenic harm involve little or no moral culpability. Even when blame is justified, an undue focus on one individual often deflects attention from other important factors within the inherent complexity of modern healthcare. This revised second edition advocates a rethinking of accountability in healthcare based on science, the principles of a just culture, and novel therapeutic legal processes. Updated to include many recent relevant events, including the Keystone Project in the USA and the Mid Staffordshire scandal in the UK, this book considers how the concepts of a just culture have been successfully implemented so far, and makes recommendations for best practice. This book will be of interest to anyone concerned with patient safety, medical law and the regulation of healthcare.

Foreword; Acknowledgement; Introduction; 1. Accidents; 2. The human factor; 3. Errors; 4. Violations; 5. Negligence, recklessness and blame; 6. The standard of care; 7. Assessing the standard - the role of the expert witness; 8. Beyond blame: responding to the needs of the injured; 9. The place of the criminal law in healthcare; 10. Rethinking accountability in healthcare; Conclusion; Index.

Alan Merry practices in anaesthesia and chronic pain management at Auckland City Hospital, and is Head of the School of Medicine at the University of Auckland, Chair of the Board of the New Zealand Health Quality and Safety Commission and a board member of the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists and the Lifebox Foundation. His research and publications reflect interests in medical law, human factors, patient safety and global health. He is an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
Warren Brookbanks is a legal academic, and former practising lawyer and probation officer, and is currently Professor of Law and Director for the Centre for Non-Adversarial Justice at the Auckland University of Technology Law School. He has written extensively in the areas of criminal law, psychiatry and the law, and therapeutic jurisprudence, and was previously President of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (ANZAPPL). His textbooks on criminal law and mental health law have been past winners of the J. F. Northey Memorial Book Prize.