Concern for the safety of patients has always been part of the practice and organization of medicine. Te obligation of doctors to consider the risk of intervention and the safety of patients was present in the Hippocratic corpus of writings and has been an integral part of teaching medicine and regulating medical misconduct since antiquity. Today, the well-known axiom ‘above all, do no harm’ (in Latin primum non nocere) is, in spite of its contested origin, understood as a cornerstone in medical codes of conduct. Tis ethical norm of non-malefcence is taught in medical schools throughout the world not so much as a rigid rule or a fundamental principle, but as a symbol of sound clinical judgement (Brewin 1994) and as a reminder that all clinical activity carries the potential for harm (Smith 2005). In this way, the norm of non-malefcence is integral to the ethical formation of medical students, where learning to become a doctor involves the ability to practise medicine in the face of fallibility and uncertainty. It involves the inculcation of the fact that as a clinician your decisions and actions might cause harm, disability and death for the patients, regardless of your good intentions (Fox 1957; Paget 1988). From an organizational and societal perspective, managing medical error and misconduct function as a way to establish the line between acceptable and unacceptable medical practice and ofce-holding.