Once again, another study that reminds me that physicians are normal people. In this article titled, Doctor's Often Don't Fess Up to Errors we see where even doctor's are people too.

I am lucky in the fact that the doctor's in my life are also people that I feel a companionship with or have worked hard to build a dialog with. Except for one emergency room doctor who changed the face of it all and made me realize how important developing a mutual bond with your doctor is.

The only time that I have had medical complications and I believe, medical errors are with an emergency room procedure with a physician that I didn't know, but had been warned about. At the time, I had no choice but to go through with the treatment, but the results were less than stellar and had to be redone by my regular ob-gyn. I learned my lesson and had the e.r. physician red flagged from my chart as he also worked at my women's clinic.

If confronted, I don't believe that the e.r. doctor would believe that anything he did was wrong. Yet, I know that from the outcome and his demeanor that it was. According to the above study, doctor's believe that honest reporting of errors is the correct thing to do, but only a handful actually do it.

According to the report, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, 97 percent of respondents said they would disclose a hypothetical error resulting in minor harm to a patient. Ninety-three percent said they would disclose an error causing major harm.

In real life, however, 41 percent of respondents said they had disclosed an actual minor error to a patient and just 5 percent had told a patient of an actual major error. Conversely, 19 percent of respondents acknowledged they did not disclose an actual minor error and 4 percent acknowledged not revealing an actual major error.

additional resources

Journal of General Internal Medicine, online May 1, 2007