From Battlefield to Bedside: Contextualizing Just Culture Through Sun Tzu’s Leadership

Alex Ren Jye, Kim and Keng Sheng, Chew (2025) From Battlefield to Bedside: Contextualizing Just Culture Through Sun Tzu’s Leadership. Journal of Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality, 4 (1). pp. 56-59. ISSN 2666-3856

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Abstract

Just culture provides a framework to distinguish human error, at-risk behavior, and reckless conduct, fostering learning while maintaining fair accountability. This paper uses Sun Tzu’s concubine story from The Art of War as a historical analogy to examine leadership, discipline, and accountability in high-stakes settings. Sun Tzu’s approach: clarifying instructions, addressing repeated noncompliance, and applying proportionate consequences, illustrates how discipline and fairness can coexist. In contemporary healthcare, these lessons translate into providing clear guidance, coaching at-risk behaviors, and enforcing transparent consequences for reckless actions. Such approaches cultivate psychologically safe, resilient systems where staff are empowered to report errors, learn from mistakes, and uphold patient safety.

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