Traditional M&M (mortality and morbidity) meetings – Many errors are not reviewed, and the key protagonists often not present when a case is being discussed; fail to engage affected families. This lack of transparency in the context of the Francis report is at odds with our duty of candour to patients when things go wrong.

Much energy is spent in the NHS concluding whether errors, adverse incidents and deaths are ‘avoidable’ or ‘preventable’.

‘Avoidability’ is an arbitrary conclusion – what matters, surely, is the care that the child received. Professional analysis of the care given reassures parents that their child’s life is of primary importance, and may provide some comfort that their experience will benefit other children.

Root cause analysis (RCA) tracks the origins of an adverse event back to find causes – too simplistic?

cf ‘Safety-II’ approach – focuses on understanding how things usually go right, and only then exploring why things occasionally go wrong.  Rare serious events, although easy to identify, often have complex aetiology, and factors may be difficult to modify. In contrast, “normal” behaviour may be easier to understand and to influence.

Parents’ own questions should inform professional discussion.  Analysis should go beyond identifying what the child died from, to considering why a child died of that condition, in that place,  at that time.

“The investigation of medical error, adverse events and child mortality each requires a distinct approach that revolves around a continuous cycle of reporting, professional scrutiny and follow-through of SMART actions. These processes should separately feed into a properly formatted clinical governance meeting, the purpose of which is to provide assurance to hospital boards and other regulatory bodies that there exists coordinated oversight of risk management, clinical effectiveness, audit and patient experience.”

[James Fraser, Bristol – Arch Dis Child doi:10.1136/archdischild-2015-309536 ]