Risk in Medicine: Early Developments to the 1980s

Sara Melo and Matthias Beck
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Sara Melo: Queen’s University Belfast
Matthias Beck: Queen’s University Belfast

Chapter 2 in Quality Management and Managerialism in Healthcare, 2014, pp 32-47 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The application of risk management techniques to healthcare quality and patient safety is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating to the period from about the late 1960s to the 1990s, when a series of studies highlighted the incidence of iatrogenic events (see, e.g., Shimmel, 1964; Girdwood, 1974; Lakshmanan, Hershey, and Breslau, 1986). Despite this relatively recent application, the relationship between risk thinking and medicine is much older, dating back to the creation of probability theory and descriptive statistical analysis during the European Enlightenment. The first part of this chapter briefly reviews the historical relationship between risk thinking and medicine. This is followed by a discussion of the evolving literature on the hazards of healthcare, or iatrogenic disease more generally.

Keywords: Quality Management; Medical Innovation; Iatrogenic Event; Risk Concept; Premature Coronary Heart Disease (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-35199-9_2

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137351999_2

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