Purpose – Inquiries into healthcare organisations have highlighted organisational or system failure, attributed to poor responses to early warning signs. One response, and challenge, is for professionals and academics to build capacity for quality and safety research to provide evidence for...

Purpose – This paper aims to be a theoretical examination of the role of individuals in sponsoring and facilitating effective, systemic change in organisations. Using reports of a number of high‐profile initiatives to improve patient safety, it seeks to analyse the role of individual health...