On the prospects for a blame-free medical culture.
Collins ME, Block SD, Arnold RM, et al. On the prospects for a blame-free medical culture. Soc Sci Med. 2009;69(9):1287-90. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.08.033.
This study found that physicians view blame as having several functions, including acting as a stimulus for learning and improvement. However, since physicians still treat errors as a personal failing, this poses challenges when asking them to think of errors in a systems context, which is one step toward creating a blame-free culture.