'Culture of medicine,' not fear of malpractice, prompts physicians to withhold i

[Guest guest]

'Culture of medicine,' not fear of malpractice, prompts physicians to

withhold information about Medical errors from patients

http://www.news-medical.net/?id=19543

Physicians often fail to inform patients about medical errors because

of the " culture of medicine, " rather than because of concerns about

malpractice lawsuits, according to a study published on Monday in the

Archives of Internal Medicine, the Seattle Times reports.

For the study, researchers from the University of Washington surveyed

1,404 surgeons and general practitioners in Canada, which limits

medical liability and discourages malpractice lawsuits, and 1,233

surgeons and general practitioners in Washington and Missouri, two

states considered to have high malpractice insurance costs.

Researchers asked survey participants to respond to specific

scenarios in which they had committed medical errors. According to

the study, Canadian and U.S. respondents were significantly less

likely to inform patients about serious medical errors when patients

were unlikely to find the mistakes on their own, and their decisions

on whether to inform patients about errors were not affected by

concerns about malpractice lawsuits.

More than half of respondents said that they would inform patients

about adverse events but would not inform them that the problems

resulted from medical errors, and only one-third said that they would

apologize, the study finds.

Study authors Larson, a former medical director at the UW

Medical Center and current head of Group Health's Center for Health

Studies, and Gallagher, a UW internal medicine physician, said

that physicians learn a " culture of perfectionism " in medical school

that discourages the disclosure of medical errors. Larson said, " This

code of silence, this conspiracy of silence does not work for

reducing errors, " adding, " What we know now is it does nobody any

good to bury a mistake or cover up a mistake; you can't correct what

led to the mistake unless you deal with it explicitly " (Ostrom,

Seattle Times, 8/17).