Professor Carl Macrae

BSc (Hons) (University of Manchester), PhD (University of East Anglia)

Department: Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management
Centres/Institutes: CHILL, WEORG
E-mail: Carl.Macrae@nottingham.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 115 9515254
Location: C11 (North Building, Jubilee Campus)

Carl Macrae is an applied psychologist who studies how people and organisations learn, innovate and improve in societally critical industries that manage significant risks and face considerable regulatory scrutiny. His research explores the management, governance and regulation of risk and resilience, primarily in healthcare and aviation, with a particular interest in the challenges surrounding the safety of new autonomous and intelligent technologies.

Carl's research uses a range of ethnographic and qualitative methods to understand the sociotechnical sources of risk, safety, reliability and resilience in critical systems; the practical work of interpreting and learning from disruptive events, simulations and innovations; and the social, cultural and organisational processes involved in managing and regulating risk and enacting learning and improvement. His book, "Close Calls", explored the practical work involved in analysing and learning from safety events in the aviation industry, and was shortlisted for the British Psychological Society book awards 2017.

Carl regularly advises organisations, regulators and policymakers on challenging risk and safety issues, and has been appointed as an advisor to a range of national healthcare agencies. His work has previously led to a Parliamentary inquiry and the subsequent establishment of the first national, learning-focused safety investigation body for healthcare in England, the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB). He has acted as Specialist Advisor and been called as an expert witness to Parliamentary Select Committee inquiries on these issues and associated legislation. In recognition of his impact, Carl was awarded the 2024 British Psychological Society Division of Occupational Psychology Award for Outstanding Contribution to the field.

Carl is an Honorary Professor at the SHARE Centre for Resilience in Healthcare, University of Stavanger, Norway, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Previously he has been Special Advisor at the NHS National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), Associate Director of Research and Evaluation at the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB), National Professional Advisor for Patient Safety at the Care Quality Commission (CQC), Health Foundation Improvement Science Fellow, and an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow.

He has held research appointments at Imperial College London, London School of Economics, University of Oxford and University of Leicester. He has also held posts of Professor II (visiting professor) in the SHARE Centre for Resilience in Healthcare at University of Stavanger, Norway, and Visiting Professor of Human Factors and Digital Safety at Halmstad University, Sweden; and been an academic visitor at Stanford University, University of California San Francisco, Australian National University and Cranfield University.

 

Recent Publications

The following lists my publications from 2014 to the present day.

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I currently convene and teach the Executive MBA module "Ethics, Governance and Risk" (BUSI4047), and teach on the MSc in Quality and Patient Safety Improvement (Health Sciences). Previously I was Director of the Executive MBA in Healthcare (2022-2023) and am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

NIHR Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Research Collaboration
Carl is co-theme lead of the "Safer Systems, Cultures and Practices" research theme within the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Research Collaboration (PSRC), with Prof Jane O'Hara at University of Cambridge. This is one of 6 PSRC's that are working in partnership with the NHS across England to bring patient safety discoveries to the front line of care.
https://psrc-yh.nihr.ac.uk

NIHR Response Study
Carl is jointly leading, with Prof Jane O'Hara at University of Cambridge, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) "Response Study", a 3 year evaluation of the national implementation of NHS England's new Patient Safety Incident Response Framework that determines how organisations across the NHS analyse, investigate and learn from safety incidents.
https://responsestudy.leeds.ac.uk

US National Patient Safety Board - Advocacy Coalition
A discussion hosted by Karen Wolk Feinstein of the US National Patient Safety Board Advocacy Coalition, exploring what might be learnt from the experiences of England and Norway in setting up national independent safety investigation bodies to support learning across the health system.
https://npsb.org/podcast/episode-11-england-norway-chart-the-course/

My research explores how people and organisations learn, innovate and improve in societally critical industries that manage significant risks and are subject to considerable regulatory scrutiny such as transport, healthcare and energy. I specifically aim to explain the practical work that is involved in the accomplishment of resilience, safety and sustainability where those outcomes are particularly challenging to achieve.

A core aim of my research is to understand how organisational activities and strategies can be disrupted by new innovations or unexpected events, and the learning and sensemaking activities that unfold around those disruptions and surprises. My research is often conducted in close collaboration with organisations and regulators to enable both empirical depth and practical relevance, and has been supported by major funders including ESRC, EPSRC, Wellcome, NIHR and The Health Foundation.

My overarching research programme is oriented to both developing new theory and directly informing practice and policy, and addresses five interrelated arenas:

- Integrating human and artificial intelligence
- Regulatory learning for technological change
- Organisational resilience and cultures of reliability
- Learning through disruption and investigation
- Simulation, demonstrators and systems improvement

My research and impact has been recognised by several national awards including the British Psychological Society's Division of Occupational Psychology Award for Outstanding Contribution to Occupational Psychology (2024) for outstanding contribution to the field; the British Psychological Society's Qualitative Methods in Psychology Early Career Award (2010-2011) for my 2009 postdoctoral publication "Making Risks Visible"; and the British Psychological Society's Division of Occupational Psychology Student Award for innovative postgraduate research (2003-2004).

I currently jointly lead, with Prof Jane O'Hara at University of Cambridge, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) "Response Study". This is a major 4 year (2022-2026) national evaluation of the implementation of NHS England's new policy on analysing, investigating and learning from safety incidents within NHS organisations.

I am also co-theme lead of the "Safer Systems, Cultures and Practices" research theme within the 5 year (2023-2028) NIHR Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Research Collaboration (PSRC), with Prof Jane O'Hara. This is one of four interconnected themes within this large research programme working with partners locally, nationally and internationally to develop more systematic approaches to the management and improvement of safety.

Carl is currently collaborating on the following projects:

• Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Research Collaborative

Carl is currently supervising the following Research Students:

Nguyen Anh Thoai Le