Lawsuits Not Reason For Doctors' Tight Lips on Errors
"...As debates over medical malpractice raged in Washington and across the country, many doctors have blamed a litigious system in the United States for discouraging doctors from openly admitting mistakes to patients. Those same doctors have held up the Canadian system, which drastically limits liability and discourages lawsuits, as a model. But it turns out that it's not the risk of lawsuits that zips doctors' lips but rather the 'culture of medicine' itself, say leading researchers on the subject. Canadian doctors are just as reluctant to fess up to mistakes, said Dr. Thomas Gallagher, a University of Washington internal-medicine physician and co-author of two studies published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine. They are the first to compare attitudes about error disclosure among doctors in the two countries."
Read the full article in the Seattle Times.