Management of Risks & Practices in Healthcare, an Interesource Group led initiative, is a project co-funded by the European Commission under the Leonardo da Vinci Programme. MORPH, a transnational study, examines risks in healthcare institutions focusing on the implementation of best practice training. Interesource Group (Ireland) Limited, project originator and coordinator have established a Europe-wide consortium consisting of the Division of Legal Medicine, University College Dublin, Ireland; the Department of Medical Physics, University of Dundee, Scotland; Foundation for Promotion of Entrepreneurship (FPE), Poland and the Health Care Association, Bulgaria. Recent figures released by the Irish Department of Health & Children show that there is a continuing increase in the cost of medical indemnity for medium to high-risk medical practitioners. The total cost of all medical indemnity to the Irish Exchequer in the year 2000 amounted to over 41 million euro. According to the Department of Health & Children the reduction of indemnity costs requires action to lessen the number of adverse incidents which give rise to claims. The absence of risk management and medico-legal protocols and procedures result in costly lawsuits which stretch scarce resources and place a huge degree of stress on healthcare professionals and patients alike. The term "risk management" has emerged to describe a collection of policies, practices and procedures which are designed to identify, quantify and reduce the risks which healthcare institutions and individual practitioners face. MORPH aims to identify trends and practices in healthcare institutions and increase awareness of risk management across Europe. In order to equip practitioners and professionals involved in healthcare with the necessary risk management skills, the project will produce an educational tool for training that consists of reports and a collection of essays, an interactive CDROM comprising of best practice video interviews and a series of case studies.