Risk thinking is transforming the understanding, organisation and management of health care systems, and its significance is likely to increase still further over the next two decades as technological advances, for example the new genetics and the discovery of new biomedical markers, open up novel possibilities for health risk management. Heightened societal risk consciousness, such as food panics and the debate over the MMR vaccine, co-exists, apparently paradoxically, with increased life expectancy in advanced industrial societies and increasing concern about the longer term future. At the same time, social trends are pushing health care systems towards the surveillance of populations and the targeting of groups identified as being at higher risk. All too often, service users, health professionals, policy makers and researchers draw upon a risk management framework without reflecting critically on its assumptions or limitations. This introductory text focuses on the underlying generic issues of risk management in a health care. Aimed at health professionals, managers, educators and policy makers who are concerned with risk management, it allows the reader to analyse risk management issues, and to critically evaluate the claims made about existing and new technologies, in an informed way. It covers all aspects of risk relevant to a clinical setting and is closely related to decision making in the clinic.

Introduction, Bob Heyman and Mike Titterton 1. The concept of risk, Bob Heyman 2. The social construction of health risks, Bob Heyman 3. Values and health risks, Bob Heyman 4. Risk and probabilistic reasoning, All 5. Time and health risks, All 6. Information about health risks, Andy Alaszewski 7. Health risks and the media, Monica Shaw 8. The regulation of health risks, Monica Shaw 9. Health risk and the patient safety agenda, All

Bob Heyman , Professor of Health Care Risk Management, University of Huddersfield and Emeritus Professor of Health Care Research, City University, London, Andy Alaszewski , Professor of Health Studies and Director of the Centre for Health Services Studies, University of Kent, Monica Shaw , Emeritus Professor in Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Mike Titterton , Chair, Health & Life for Everyone (International Health Charity registered in Scotland)