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When it comes to their colleagues’ mistakes, doctors keep mum
by Michael Cook
Mandatory reporting over issues like death or injury due to defective manufactured goods or over suspected child abuse is common nowadays. How about doctor error? This is one of the leading causes of death in the US -- but doctors are very reluctant to blow the whistle on their colleagues. This happens for a range of reasons, according to a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine. Doctors are supposed to tell patients about their own mistakes, but not necessarily about those made by other doctors. Lead author Thomas Gallagher, of the University of Washington School of Medicine, and his colleagues explain why:
"… multiple barriers, including
embarrassment, lack of confidence in one's disclosure skills, and mixed
messages from institutions and malpractice insurers, make talking with
patients about errors challenging. Several distinctive aspects of
disclosing harmful errors involving colleagues intensify the
difficulties.
"One challenge is determining what
happened when a clinician was not directly involved in the event in
question. He or she may have little firsthand knowledge about the event,
and relevant information in the medical record may be lacking. Beyond
this, potential errors exist on a broad spectrum ranging from clinical
decisions that are 'not what I would have done' but are within the
standard of care to blatant errors that might even suggest a problem of
professional competence or proficiency."
Dr Gallagher's article concludes that "transparent disclosure of errors is a shared professional responsibility". Source: Bio-Edge |
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Mum is the Word
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