Normative errors, which called into question the moral character of the culprit, were unacceptable and potentially jeopardized careers.
He thought that surgeons' reluctance to pass judgment on technical errors and the difficulty determining a range of acceptable technical performance left normative errors as the default criteria for creating professional boundaries (see 5, pp 174 175).
The related topics such as non-normative error concealment and network environment are also described.
Based on our own interview study with psychotherapists (PTs) we categorized psychotherapeutic errors into technical, judgemental, normative and system errors – similar to how Charles Bosk categorized medical errors [ 1, 4].
5 Time and again, he saw that normative (or moral) errors were punished while technical errors or errors in judgment were more likely to be forgiven provided the errant surgeon acknowledged the lapse and was contrite.
Because both kinds of errors (normative and technical/judgment) can gravely harm patients, Bosk wondered why controls over moral performance would take precedence over controls of technical performance.
As is the case in any statistically-derived estimate of normative performance, there is inherent error in our ability to predict performance at the individual level.
In general, research in this area has progressed from early somewhat anecdotal observations to studies placing greater reliance on standardized assessments, which allow one to quantify impairment in relation to a normative group, and to estimate error of measurement.
The more concrete question posed is "how much uncertainty is there over the standing (i.e., percentile rank) of the patient's MDAS score as a function of error in using a normative sample to estimate its standing in the normative population.
