Tuesday
Sep212010
Positive risk-taking: an idea whose time has come
Tuesday, September 21, 2010 at 8:54PM Update: Originally the PDF was missing (and our thanks to an eagle-eyed visitor for letting us know). The PDF has now been added. The article is from 2004 and is a forerunner of 2 other articles, published in 2010, which can be found here.
This was the first of Steve's dedicated articles to the concept of positive risk-taking, and is produced here with kind permission from the publishers of Health Care Risk Report.
Reader Comments (8)
Link to article is not present, please can this be rectified?
Thanks for letting us know Vince, I have added the PDF now, sorry for the oversight. (Paul)
Thanks for that Paul, it's very much appreciated!
Vince.
Hi Paul, I notice that the link is for Steve's 2004 article entitled "Positive risk taking: an idea who's time has come", however, the blog says that the article with the subtitle "a basis for good decision making" was first published in March 2010. Is this the same article or different? Please excuse my persistence, I am just interested to know how these ideas relate to the most current policy.
Cheers, Vince
Hi Vince,
Many thanks for your persistence. We are in the process of transfering content from an old website format to this new format, and you have identified an error in placement of some of this content. We really appreciate the help of readers so we can get it right. In response to your query about the content and policy, my intention has been to reference recognition of updated Department of Health policy in 2007, but more importantly to reflect a focus in practice on the process of good risk decision-making.
Thanks. Steve
Thanks for the swift response Steve, and on a weekend too, that's commitment!
Thanks for providing these articles, it is very much appreciated. The way I see it, dealing with the ethical dilemmas around promotion of autonomy and management of risk, in a creative and dynamic way, really lies at the heart of an effective and humane mental health service. When risk assessment is reduced to a form filling exercise, we are all in danger of "sleeping on the job". I agree wholeheartedly that prescriptive and overly defensive practices can have significant negative consequences for service users. Unfortunately, it is all too common to see the best will in the world usurped by the prevalence of "risk fascism". I have seen for myself that nurses only need to be stung once by unsupportive "knee jerk" management decisions, and they become imprinted with a defensive attitude for the rest of their career. This serves only to stifle creativity, initiative and any chance of an open dialogue, to the detriment to service users.
Thanks again, Vince.
The positive feedback is much appreciated.
I wholeheartedly agree with your reflections on practice and management. In my experience there is a lot of good work going on, and good ideas about how to work constructively with risk. Unfortunately, it is not always communicated clearly, and certainly not enabled to be captured positively by the expectations held around form-filling. I am sadened by a management culture that does so little to get alongside practitioners to understand and support good practice, relying almost exclusively on the negativity of indcident forms and inquiry findings to develop a distorted picture of what is and should be happening.
Unfortunately, it is all too common to see the best will in the world usurped by the prevalence of "risk fascism". I have seen for myself that nurses only need to be stung once by unsupportive "knee jerk" management decisions, and they become imprinted with a defensive attitude for the rest of their career.
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