Health care is especially prone to using punishment as a motivational tool, largely due the widely-accepted myth that performance should be perfect.
When finding a culprit to blame is the focus of an events aftermath, the opportunity to discover the actual underlying causes is squandered.
Training is a common but often inadequate corrective response to an event.
When punishment is a cultural norm, people tend to hide their mistakes, which undermines organizational learning.
The absence of accountability or a blame-free culture is not an acceptable alternative.
The second lesson, Punitive Culture, discusses an organizational culture that reacts to events by blaming individuals and uses punishment as a motivational tool.