The Two Cultures

Abstract

Doctors are not only under unprecedented level of scrutiny and regulation, the professional standard and expectation of performance has never been higher. However, those who work in circumstances where the most crucial resources such as adequate personnel are lacking, find the reality far removed from the high-toned language of the professional code of practice. The clash of the real and the ideal inevitably lead to catastrophic consequences as illustrated by the recent high-profile cases. Systemic failures are overlooked and diminished but the actions of individual doctors are heavily probed. This has created an unsafe culture of blame and punishment where doctors are set up to fail within a struggle system. What are the consequences of this for the profession and how to start dealing with them?

Keywords

• Psychological safety
• postgraduate training
• Professional regulation
• patient safety
• understaffing