The issue of apology and disclosure of medical errors in the context of the physician- patient relationship has attracted increasing attention in recent years. On the other hand, it has received little attention in the context of public health activities, thus missing the collective healing potential of apologizing and providing information to the public.
The purpose of this paper is to enrich the discussion regarding apologies and disclosure errors in the context of public health. To fulfil this purpose, the paper addresses the ringworm case, which is a well- known episode in the history of Israeli public health policy. More specifically, the paper focuses on a decision handed by the Israeli Supreme Court in the Eibi Case (2015), which recognized a duty to inform ringworm patients about the medical error involved in their treatment and its results. The paper seeks to examine whether this decision succeeded where other legal means failed, in the construction of a collective healing process. The paper concludes that although the Eibi Case provided the court an opportunity to contribute to the creation of a collective healing process of ringworms patients, the decision didn’t fully realize this potential.

The Israeli health system consists of approximately 200,000 employees in a variety of positions, such as: doctors, nurses, pharmacists, psychologies, physical therapists, lab workers, speech therapists, occupational therapists, dieticians, orderlies, administrators and housekeeping workers and many more. (Ministry of Health, 2016). The system has gone through long-lasting struggles, conflicts and crises initiated by power groups and various functional representations and unions. This article will focus on conflicts occurring between doctors, in their professional occupation, and the governmental ministries (Health and Treasury). In addition, it will examine the processes that encourage the occurrence of conflicts in the health system. Even though doctors do not represent the entire health system, it is important to emphasize that they are its beating heart. Their weight in the general health system is extremely high, much higher than their relative part therein.
In addition, this article will examine a struggle by doctors to shorten their long shift hours, by exposing the root causes and the reasons that led to the struggle’s demise, without the achievement of their declared goals. This article will suggest that tools appropriate for a true resolution of conflicts in the health system should be tailored and specific to the complexity of the system (as in a delicate surgery), as opposed to more general tools such as mediation, and certain “copy-paste” tools used for conflict resolution in other disciplines.

Recent decades have witnessed the appearance of multiple grounds for vaccine hesitancy. One of the options to deal with this phenomenon is legislative. Given that vaccination enforcement through law raises allegations of infringement of constitutional rights, interventions seeking to promote vaccination compliance should rather address the factors that influence vaccine hesitancy, which are – by and large – related to trust in health authorities. Trust in health authorities may be promoted by a procedure for compensating the comparatively few vaccination victims reflecting a willingness to acknowledge liability and commitment to social justice.
A qualitative study of the Israeli Vaccination Victim Insurance Law was conducted by the author. The study involved document content analysis (legislative protocols, Court judgments) and semi-structured in-depth interviews with informants representing different legal, medical and ethical perspectives. The thematic analysis found that the Israeli Vaccination Victim Insurance Law and its implementation in Court do not attain their therapeutic potential with respect to the promotion of trust. Barriers to claim submissions and the denial of all claims submitted according to the law do not permit the acknowledgement of liability or the demonstration of the authorities’ commitment to social justice.
Recognizing the therapeutic power of the Law may lead to adaptations or amendments promoting trust in the health authorities and subsequently fostering vaccine compliance.

This paper examines the intersection between the two professions – law and medicine – with reference to systematic transformations that have characterized their development in the past century. In particular, the paper examines the co-emergence of the new public health and health promotion scholarship along with the development of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) movement in the second half of the 20th century. The two movements, with their later developments, have aspired to change the focus of professionals in the field, and both have been tremendously successful on the one hand, and on the other have remained marginal to mainstream training and identity building of contemporary lawyers and doctors.

The paper discusses success as a managerial notion, on the basis of efficiency measures and consequential thinking, and contrasts it with success as a more procedural internal notion within the second generation of conflict resolution. The appeal to success in the conflict resolution field is considered as based originally on efficiency and effectiveness, while implicitly inspired by philosophical principles and moral values. Later, when new models based on identity and relationship emerged, more explicit emphasis on process and internal validity became part of the definition of success. The paper describes the particular anxiety of aspiring for consequential success in the realm of law. It also offers a model to evaluate success while assuming its open-ended and complex nature. Defining success from within a context many times helps to capture more deeply the phenomenon of conflict resolution intervention.

In this piece, I contrast success and failure in creative conflict engagement as related continua on a scale of relevance. Not always is success a good thing (for example, if goals are pedestrian or wildly unrealistic) nor is failure a bad thing (if we or the parties gain useful insights from it). Indeed, I suggest that the very effort to wrestle with these concepts is in itself a reflexive value and practice that will help our field become more robust and interesting. Moreover, I suggest by being reflexive about such questions, we will be developing a new petite theory-in-use (as opposed to a more ambitious and unrealistic grand theory) for our field.

From the beginning, second order social learning has been at the heart of conflict resolution. Learning from failure was seen by the founders of the field to be essential for individuals and social groups if they were to adapt and survive in a constantly changing environment. This article traces the origins of this concept within the field and then applies it to the field itself. How well has conflict resolution responded to failure during its 60 year development? Where are the ‘frontiers of failure’ today? The article ends with an example of adaptation to failure drawn from my own work on what can be done in the communicative sphere when, so far, conflict resolution does not work.

The field of conflict resolution has developed enough to become diverse and rich with perspectives, yet the common ground between those perspectives – a permanent core essence – has not yet been defined. The use of identity theory, specifically intergroup identity theory, may be the most effective method to understand the field’s foundations. In this article, six possible group identity claims – or grand narratives – are offered. Together, they may form a foundational code for the field, which may be examined and proved in context. Defining the profession of conflict resolution also requires engagement and dialogue with other related professions. In addition to mapping the six grand narratives, this article will suggest how these narratives can at times generate differences with other academic disciplines that deal with conflicts.

Negotiation can be thought of as the tool that facilitates conflict engagement and resolution. As part of, and yet different from, conflict theory, negotiation theory has had a separate parallel development in the last 30 years. The challenges for negotiation theory in the future are similar to those found in the broader conflict theory – ensuring that negotiation theory can be implemented by practitioners; making sure that negotiation theory draws upon a multitude of disciplines; and includes theories, experiences and culture from around the world. The development of negotiation theories in law schools – where communication to resolve disputes is part of the job description – highlights the importance of pracademics and demonstrates how we need effective theories to engage in conflict.

This article reviews the historical contingency of theory and practice in conflict engagement. World War II and the Cold War produced adversarial, distributive, competitive, and scarce resources conceptions of negotiation and conflict resolution, as evidenced by game theory and negotiation practice. More recent and more optimistic theory and practice has focused on party needs and interests and hopes for more party-tailored, contingent, flexible, participatory and more integrative and creative solutions for more than two disputants to a conflict. The current challenges of our present history are explored: continued conflict in both domestic and international settings, the challenge of “scaling up” conflict resolution theory and the problematics of developing universal theory in highly contextualized and diverse sets of conflict sites. The limits of “rationality” in conflict resolution is explored where feelings and ethical, religious and other values may be just as important in conflict engagement and handling.