We analyse an intervention in a UK teaching hospital designed to enable ‘learning from failure’, using concepts from the Dejourian school of the psychodynamics of work. Whilst much of the English-language literature about and by Dejours focuses on his theoretical elaboration of Freud’s concepts of frustration and suffering in the context of contemporary conditions of work, this article attends to Dejours’ method of action research in workplaces. Our purpose is to consider how speech about the failures of work might be considered a basis for democratic intervention, especially in the context of simulation-based learning for professional development in healthcare.