Imperial Centre for Patient Safety & Service Quality, Department of Biosurgery & Technology, Imperial College London, United Kingdom.
Soc Sci Med. 2009 Dec;69(12):1777-9. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.09.046. Epub 2009 Oct 21.
Patient safety has been high on the national and international agenda in healthcare for almost a decade. It is proving to be a tough problem; tough in cultural, technical, clinical, and psychological terms and because of its massive scale and heterogeneity. While many of the challenges and problems of patient safety are social and organisational, few social scientists are involved in patient safety. Clinicians and clinical researchers are for the most part open to other perspectives, but that they may not fully appreciate the potential contribution of the social sciences. Social scientists can, for instance, assist in drawing attention to the need to take an account of the social and cultural context of patient safety interventions, by drawing on narratives and stories to illuminate organisational processes and by encouraging greater use of ethnographic and observational research. However, if social scientists are to have a real impact they need to do more than simply offer critiques of patient safety and move to active engagement with clinicians and patient safety researchers.
近十年来，患者安全一直是国家和国际医疗保健议程上的重中之重。事实证明，这是一个棘手的问题；从文化、技术、临床和心理角度来看，以及由于其规模庞大和异质性，这是一个棘手的问题。虽然患者安全的许多挑战和问题是社会性和组织性的，但很少有社会科学家参与到患者安全领域中。临床医生和临床研究人员在大多数情况下对其他观点持开放态度，但他们可能并不完全理解社会科学的潜在贡献。例如，社会科学家可以通过叙事和故事来阐明组织过程，并鼓励更多地使用民族志和观察性研究，来帮助引起人们对患者安全干预措施需要考虑社会和文化背景的关注。然而，如果社会科学家要产生真正的影响，他们需要做的不仅仅是对患者安全提出批评，而是要积极与临床医生和患者安全研究人员合作。
