Too few lessons learnt from inquiries

The official reaction when things go wrong in the NHS is increasingly to set up an inquiry. Yet many inquiries unearth similar organisational problems and make similar recommendations, suggesting that the lessons of previous inquiries are not being learnt. On page 895 Walshe and Higgins document the growth of inquiries in the NHS and their different types. Increasingly inquiries are being set up as independent external investigations with full inquisitorial powers, often in response to public pressure. Yet, the authors suggest, all inquiries are a form of qualitative study: their biases and generalisability need to be carefully considered. Ideally, they should be a measure of last resort, used only when other methods of investigation have failed.

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

The use and impact of inquiries in the NHS

Kieran Walshe and Joan Higgins
BMJ 2002 325: 895-900. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]