Comparison of the different attitudes of physicians and patients regarding a medical error
Issues or focus group discussion
Attitudes of patients
Attitudes of physicians
Definition error
Not discuss preventable adverse events, deviations in health care, poor quality of service and poor interpersonal relationship of doctors. Open attitude.
Closed attitude is accepted only discuss deviations from the standard of care.
What mistakes should be disclosed to the patient?
Reveal all errors that cause damage.
Reveal errors that cause harm, unless it is a trivial or irrelevant damage that may create more problems than benefits
Speaking in relation to forgetfulness
Mixed positions.
Should not be discussed on medical forgetfulness
What information should be disclosed with respect to medical error?
It must reveal all
Should carefully chosen words to use
How disclose medical error
Tell the truth and show compassion
Tell the truth, be objective and professional
Apologize
It is recommended to apologize
Believe that apologizing can make a legal sanction attributable
Emotional impact of the error
Shock, anger, frustration and emotional imbalance
Frustration. I desire to understand the damage and its impact
Source: Modified our (113)
Patients generally agree that they would like to know those errors that cause harm, they want to know how and why it happened, the implications for their health, how it can be corrected the problem and its prevention in the future. Although patients want to quickly find medical errors, they accept that sometimes come to obtain information on the error cause and prevention can take time.
From the psychological point of view patients describe a wide range of emotional responses after a medical error such as sadness, anxiety, depression, trauma, anger, annoyance; for his hospital stay is prolonged and frustration because the error could have been prevented. However, physicians also experience strong emotions after a medical error, they feel responsible for having caused harm to the patient, and develop feelings of guilt that affect their emotional, work and private life, present fear of a possible lawsuit and anxiety what all this might affect his honor and reputation. (189)
Medical errors are unfortunately unavoidable part within the medical practice, and patients want to know the details, causes, consequences and prevention of them in the future. There is a very stressful time that starts from the commission of the error, until the moment when he must speak of it to a patient and which can give rise to any dispute. (190)
why the doctors are wrong? Page 8
