Greedy Trial Lawyer
"Medical Error Disclosure" - What A Novel Idea!
Category: In Your Face
Welcome to the concept of medical error disclosure. For those of you who are doctors or patients this may be a totally new experience for you. For those of you who are personal injury attorneys you may be more familiar with the concepts of medical error concealment or medical error denial.
Anyway, thanks to a good poop ("In which [a blogger answers] the questions posed in the titles of some scientific articles in a generally snarky and sarcastic manner") I was pointed to:
Disclosure of medical error: is it worth the risk?
Straumanis JP, Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Abstract -The climate within the United States is rapidly changing with respect to patient and family knowledge of medical error and their expectations of the events that should occur after an error.
This article examines the history and changing tide of medical error disclosure, reviews the limited but growing body of literature surrounding patient and physician attitudes toward disclosing and discussing medical error, makes suggestions on what and how to disclose to patients and families that an error has occurred, and finally, discusses the effect of error disclosure.
CONCLUSION: It seems that if disclosure of medical error is made with compassion, in a timely manner, and with good communication skills both during and after the disclosure process, patients and their families are at least no more likely to seek legal action and some lawsuits may actually be avoided.
Should it really take the carrot of avoiding some lawsuits to convince doctors to disclose medical errors to the families of pediatric patients?
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