Sociology of health & illness
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Recent UK health policy initiatives promote a 'no blame culture' and learning from adverse events to enhance patient safety in the NHS. Similar initiatives exist in the USA and Australia. ⋯ The Three Inquiries, a recent series of statutory inquiries held in the UK, are used as a case study to explore some of the intra- and inter-professional difficulties of reporting errors and misconduct by medical practitioners. The paper offers an interpretive social science perspective as an alternative to more policy oriented and managerial approaches to patient safety issues, focusing on deeper structural aspects of organisational phenomena implicated in the ability or otherwise of medical and other healthcare staff to report mistakes and misconduct as one aspect of patient safety.