title: Analysing the "field" of patient safety employing Bourdieusian technologies.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This paper aims to analyse the development of patient safety as a field within which patients are peripheral stakeholders.
  
  
  METHODS
  The authors examined the patient safety movement from the perspective of a field in which agents struggle for control over various forms of capital, including economic, social, cultural and symbolic capital. In order to undertake this analysis the authors drew on the literature on errors and patient safety, key inquiries into patient safety, and research conducted with health professionals in New South Wales, Australia.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The patient safety movement has created a heightened sense of awareness of errors and risk across health systems, thereby attracting and creating significant amounts of capital. The authors argue that in the process of struggle to constitute and contain a new field of health, patients and their narratives are rendered vulnerable to appropriation and incorporation.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  By considering patient safety from a sociological rather than a technical framework, it is possible to gain new insights into why reducing the levels of medical errors have proven so difficult.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Improved knowledge of how patient safety operates as a field may contribute to more effective strategies in reducing those types of errors.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Despite the growth in the number of publications in patient safety there has been only minimal analysis of the field itself, rather than its technical or organisational components. This paper contributes to a new way of conceptualising and enacting patient safety, one that acknowledges the vulnerability of the parties involved, particularly patients.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Clinical Governance Research in Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. j.travaglia@unsw.edu.au
authors.forename: Joanne F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Travaglia
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Braithwaite
mesh_terms: D017144:Focus Groups; D006801:Humans; D019300:Medical Errors / Q000517:prevention & control; D009517:New South Wales; D010361:Patients; D011582:Psychological Theory; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D012196:Review Literature as Topic; D017751:Safety Management; D012962:Sociology, Medical