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The biggest cause of harm in hospitals is of course unnecessary hospitalisation. The latter is of course caused as unintended consequence of the fear culture created through regulation & fears of professional discipline. Read on if you have time:

Caricature of risk:
Residential home staff call an ambulance because of fears of adult protection being raised by social services who have themselves been criticised because of shortcomings over child protection and have stepped up pressures in all areas of safeguarding.
Paramedics attend and almost always convey the patient because of perceptions that management will never condemn this decision but any decision not to convey will inevitably increase their risk of professional discipline or even their employment in the event of deterioration of the patient.
The patient arrives in A&E and is found to have easily treatable pathology but she is unsteady on her feet and the level of risk is deemed too great to allow rapid discharge and so she is admitted.
The patient becomes progressively more confused and looses what mobility she had, so after a lengthy stay, prolonged because of complex discharge procedures and lack of nursing home beds is discharged to a more expensive care facility to the one she left several weeks earlier.
The patient eventually arrives in a nursing home where she is registered with a new GP, she continues to deteriorate but her new GP is not confident enough to make the decision that she is entering the terminal phase of her life. He fears the potential complaint of relatives and is also under pressure from the home who are under investigation by CQC and are keen to reduce any death on their premises so soon after admission. He readmits the patients who soon after dies.
The consequence of all of the above risk averse behaviour is that our hospitals are overcrowded which increases the risk to other in-patients. A lack of beds means that the Trust cannot get waiting listed patients in for necessary surgery and the whole system is threatened by financial overspend and so risk and perceptions of risk have actually put the whole system at risk!!!
The solution? Help professionals to share risk as a means of coping. Educate at every level to facilitate understanding of all of the above.

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