This paper discusses the current initiatives on error and adverse events within healthcare, with a particular focus on the NHS, within the context of health policy. One of the key features of the paper is the proposal for an emergent taxonomy of the medical error literature, developed from the ideologies and rationales that underpin their approaches. This taxonomy provides details of three categories—empiricists, organisational rationalists and reformers of professional culture—and these act as an organising framework for the exploration of the (...) potential consequences of current policy on errors and adverse events. This discussion highlights the tension between optimising health outcomes for patients and managing the health system as effectively as possible. In particular, the inherent tension between explicit managerial formulations of risk and implicit risk management strategies associated with medical professionalism are considered. (shrink)