Standardization for patient safety in a hospital department: Killing butterflies with a musket?

What is it about?

This paper looks at the ways in which standardization for patient safety is approached from different positions in the field viz. nurses and managers in a hospital department, the hospital management and standard inventers. We show how the standardization of work rests on the master narrative of patient safety management and how this narrative clashes with the nurses’ practical perception of good care, which rests on the counter narrative of the clinical judgement.

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Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Safety standardization in healthcare is often studied within the broader framework of performance management using functionalist outside-in and prescriptive approaches. Our study contributes to this literature by approaching standardization and the responses to it as taking place in a dialectic movement between subjective shop floor experiences and wider field level forces.