Cautionary tales, i.e. anecdotal descriptions of dangerous situations and avoidable mistakes, play an important role in professional socialisation in all professions. Medical assistants in particular, who take on their own responsibility in everyday clinical practice, learn from these stories of "near misses". These anecdotes are mainly passed on orally and as incidental stories. As part of informal learning processes, they are therefore a reservoir of knowledge that is still rarely taken up in regular medical training.

The Cautionary Tales project examines these narratives against the background that increasing digitalisation is intensifying the interaction between human and non-human actors in patient treatment. This creates new complexities and ambiguities that generate their own cautionary tales (e.g. about overhearing warning tones, incorrectly glued patient IDs, etc.). This informally passed-on knowledge is to be collected and analysed via anonymised individual interviews with assistant doctors: Are there typical critical patterns or linkages in hybrid decision-making situations? Are there differences in the perception of cautionary tales that are related to different characteristics of the medical profession (e.g. cultural, gender-specific, etc.)?