This thesis represents a body of work which is about individual and organisational learning from adverse incidents, the context of the studies was the National Health Service (NHS). The thesis presents a series of exploratory studies which were undertaken in order to discover whether NHS staff had a disposition to learn from adverse incidents and whether their employing organisations were indicative of a supportive learning environment. The studies began with the premise that failing to support NHS staff to learn from adverse incidents contributed to their occurrence and re-occurrence.
This thesis makes a contribution to the scientific community in a number of ways; firstly it relates findings from exploring deep approaches to individual and
organisational learning from adverse incidents. Secondly the thesis highlights the role of educational leadership as a mechanism for overcoming organisational barriers to learning from adverse incidents. Lastly and most importantly the thesis demonstrates that while progress is being made to educate staff towards achieving greater patient safety, there is much to be gained from concentrating educational efforts on supporting learning in the workplace. To this end the thesis illuminates how workplace learning from adverse incidents can be viewed as a source of positive learning for both the individual and the organisation and, presents findings from a new piloted approach to learning in which the student/participants came to view learning from adverse incidents as a positive experience. The thesis concludes with a range of tools specifically designed to support NHS staff in the workplace to learn from adverse incidents.