Patient safety is not a new concern; after all, the first principle of medicine is the Hippocratic instruction to ‘do no harm’. However, the systematic study of error and its higher profile in professional, policy, and regulatory environments is a recent phenomenon. Happily, there is no longer, as Charles Vincent opined in 1989, a negligent lack of research into errors and safety.1 Reflecting the multi-disciplinary nature of the subject, significant contributions have emerged from psychology,2 medical sociology,3 policy studies,4 health services research,5 and medico-legal studies.6 John Tingle and Pippa Bark's edited collection of fifteen chapters from an international cast of lawyers, medics, bioethicists, economists, and psychologists, and Judith Healy's Australian focused monograph are two recent additions to the literature.