Managing tail risk in psychiatry – collaborative mapping
Too often in psychiatry we are faced with the problem of tail risk. The basic idea is ‘low probability high impact‘ events. This commonly presents among relatively stable patients in contrast to patients in an acute phase of disturbance. Some patients may have an established pattern of only one or two short-lived periods of disturbance per year where they present risks of suicide, homicide or violence, or arson. In any of those short-lived blips it is possible that serious harmRead More …
Systemic disempowerment in care-delivery organisations
Today I explore the term ‘systemic disempowerment‘ (SD) as pertains to large health and social care services. Health services are without doubt inseparably intertwined with social care services. The concept of SD moves beyond ideas of learned helplessness, which is so often thrown around. The concept of SD is far wider and deeper as this exploration will show. There is no easy way to make this blog readable in the desirable 30 second read; now widely popular among social mediaRead More …
Controversy – the God Complex
This is or will be a controversial exploration. Keep that in mind at all times. I boldly go where no psychiatrist has dared to go before! I give thanks to KJ for stimulating this exploration. What is the God Complex? The God complex has also been referred to as ‘The God Syndrome’. Here are some descriptions of what it is and is not: The God complex is not a clinical term, nor does it appear in any diagnostic manual. TheRead More …
Why lessons are not so easy to learn
The context of this exploration is twofold a) to examine how lessons may not be learned by individuals and b) difficulty for organisations in learning lessons. What ordinary people expect Let us start by understanding how ordinary people might decide what is a lesson learned. I suggest that they may expect the following: Cause and effect recognition: Many people see learning a lesson as straightforwardly recognising a direct cause and effect relationship. “I did X, and Y happened as aRead More …
Systemic failures and consequential risks
Conceptual overview: Systemic failures refer to breakdowns that occur within an interconnected set of components or systems, where the malfunction of one element can lead to cascading failures across the entire network. These are not isolated incidents but are often the result of complex interactions between various subsystems, policies, and human actors. The embedded YouTube video contains much of the text in this blog, and may be easier to process. Introduction The National Health Service (NHS) stands as a beaconRead More …