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Discontinuity and Disaster: Gaps and the Negotiation of Culpability in Medication Delivery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Sidney Dekker
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Extract

We say that celebrated accidents shape public perception of safety and risk in health care. Take the so-called celebrated story of the three Colorado nurses who, by administering bezathine penicillin intravenously, caused the death of a neonate. The nurses were charged with criminal negligence, with one pleading guilty to a reduced charge and another fighting the charge and eventually being exonerated. “Celebrated” accidents (i.e., celebrated in the media and, accordingly, popular imagination, amplified momentarily by the media as it may get ferried along from courtroom to courtroom) seem to follow a predictable script and cast participants in recognizable roles. They present heroes (e.g., a care provider who tried to save the patient despite the odds and errors of others), survivors, and victims. And, of course, they put villains, or anti-heroes, center stage – the chief protagonists of a fatal plot.

Type
Independent
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , Fall 2007 , pp. 463 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2007

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