Medical Safety

Software safety in medical applications.

The use of software in safety-critical medical applications permits sophisticated functionality that would otherwise not be achievable. However, it is very difficult to ensure that software in these systems is dependable. In particular all software development techniques have limitations, and none can provide any guarantee of overall software dependability. Given this shortcoming, the approach ...

Medical liability and patient safety.

Political debate over medical malpractice reform seldom takes meaningful account of its policy context, including the emerging science of patient safety. Instead, stakeholders on both sides use the rhetoric of patient safety to support entrenched positions on hardened proposals such as capping damages and limiting access to information about errors. Despite its déjà vu quality, the current malp...

Finding safety in medical education

The doctor-patient relationship has been at the core of medicine for centuries. However, the last decade of the 20th century has seen radical accelerating change in the context in which that relationship is embedded. It is increasingly complex and hurried and, disturbingly, it is fraught with substantial risk to the patient. Similarly, the teacher-learner relationship exists at the core of medi...

Medical aspects of trawler safety.

Medical examinations for public safety.

Driving buses in London is an occupation in which the standards of fitness have been defined and in which the frequency of, and clinical reason for, exclusion from the occupation have been recorded. The criteria of fitness to drive a passenger vehicle are physical capability to handle controls (including good eyesight) and absence of conditions liable to cause sudden collapse or excessive fatig...