Surprise News - Police Officer Found Not Guilty Page 4
Quote: Nogget @ November 5 2009, 6:54 PM GMTThere sure is a difference, but it's quite a small world's worth. It's little compensation to discover that a terrible situation has been caused by incompetence rather than malice.
Everyone makes mistakes, Nogget, even me. (Howls of "No!") A mistake isn't, by definition, due to incompetence. An mistake due to incompetence in medicine (as probably elsewhere) is more akin to a wilful disregard to be properly trained, seek help or question one's own ability. I would not defend incompetence, but mistakes happen even with the best practitioners and best systems in place. It may be of little compensation to a patient or their relatives to know an error was made by accident rather than design, but objectively it must be considered different when resolving the situation. 
Quote: Tim Walker @ November 5 2009, 10:05 PM GMTEveryone makes mistakes, Nogget, even me. (Howls of "No!") A mistake isn't, by definition, due to incompetence.
I suppose it comes down to what we define as a mistake then. I'm thinking more of those occasions when the mistake is indeed due to incompetence, as opposed to when they are due to unavoidable accidents.
But even then, the word mistake can be abused, as can be seen on Jeremy Kyle, when the inbred smack addict is asked a question in the form of "why did you sleep with your sister in law/ steal all those cars/ massacre the Kurds"? and he answers with:
"It was a mistake!"