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JUST CULTURE: BALANCING SAFETY AND ACCOUNTABILITY Sidney Dekker, PhD Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007, 153 pp., $29.95
Dr. Sidney Dekker's book, Just Culture, is a thought-provoking account of the dilemma our society faces when we attempt to balance human safety with human error.
Practitioners such as physicians, nurses, air traffic controllers, and aircraft pilots, who are skilled in making life-and-death decisions, are the focus of this book. Using real-life stories the author depicts eloquently for the reader the facts and consequences of criminalization of accidents, mistakes, and errors.
Dr. Dekker starts by examining society's reasons for wanting a "just culture." What makes us believe that some occurrences are acts of God as opposed to human management of risk?
A just culture is very difficult to define, as justice is one of those essentially contested categories. We will never agree with each other about what justice means, or what is just versus what is unjust. Essentially contested means that the very essence, the very nature of the concept is infinitely negotiable. But that does not mean that we cannot agree, or make some progress on, some very practical problems related to defining what we could call a "just culture" (p. x).
In this book, the author explores the importance, risks, and benefits of reporting and disclosing human errors.
"In 2006, Julie, a nurse from Wisconsin, was charged with 'criminal neglect of a patient causing bodily harm' in...