(wish there was an emeticon for soapbox)
I have commented on several threads about HCP's who appear unethical in the way they treat clients/patients with bullying, abuse, etc.
When it comes to my midwifery colleagues I am sometimes disappointed that so few will talk about the other midwives they have first hand knowledge of being negligent and abusive.
Physicians frequently seem to be labeled as protecting each other as part of the "good old boys network". I have commented that, if, as midwives, we don't speak up about this, we are as bad as the physicians for covering for their own. However, I had no idea how bad it was.
Our local paper editorialized yesterday on an article recently printed in the Annals of Internal Medicine about a first of its kind study. Here are the highlights:
"NEARLY half of all United States doctors fail to report incompetent or unethical colleagues, even though they agree that such mistakes should be reported, researchers said on Monday.
They found that 46 per cent of physicians surveyed admitted they knew of a serious medical error that had been made but did not tell authorities about it.
'There is a measurable disconnect between what physicians say they think is the right thing to do and what they actually do,' said Dr Eric Campbell of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, who led the survey.
In 2000, the US Institute of Medicine reported that up to 98,000 people die every year because of medical errors in hospitals alone.
Dr Campbell and colleagues surveyed more than 1,600 physicians in 2003 and 2004 for their report, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Up to 96 per cent of those surveyed said they should report all instances of significant incompetence or medical errors to the hospital clinic or to authorities. The exception was among cardiologists and surgeons, with just about 45 per cent agreeing.
And 85 per cent of most doctors said they should tell patients or relatives about significant errors.
But this did not translate into practice.
Forty per cent of the doctors said they knew of a serious medical error in their hospital group or practice but 31 per cent admitted they had done nothing about it at least once."
It would be really easy to just blame the physicians for behaving this way, but as midwives, doulas, CBE's which of us can say we have direct knowledge of a colleagues' carelessness or incompetence, but haven't said anything?
I have commented on several threads about HCP's who appear unethical in the way they treat clients/patients with bullying, abuse, etc.
When it comes to my midwifery colleagues I am sometimes disappointed that so few will talk about the other midwives they have first hand knowledge of being negligent and abusive.
Physicians frequently seem to be labeled as protecting each other as part of the "good old boys network". I have commented that, if, as midwives, we don't speak up about this, we are as bad as the physicians for covering for their own. However, I had no idea how bad it was.
Our local paper editorialized yesterday on an article recently printed in the Annals of Internal Medicine about a first of its kind study. Here are the highlights:
"NEARLY half of all United States doctors fail to report incompetent or unethical colleagues, even though they agree that such mistakes should be reported, researchers said on Monday.
They found that 46 per cent of physicians surveyed admitted they knew of a serious medical error that had been made but did not tell authorities about it.
'There is a measurable disconnect between what physicians say they think is the right thing to do and what they actually do,' said Dr Eric Campbell of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, who led the survey.
In 2000, the US Institute of Medicine reported that up to 98,000 people die every year because of medical errors in hospitals alone.
Dr Campbell and colleagues surveyed more than 1,600 physicians in 2003 and 2004 for their report, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Up to 96 per cent of those surveyed said they should report all instances of significant incompetence or medical errors to the hospital clinic or to authorities. The exception was among cardiologists and surgeons, with just about 45 per cent agreeing.
And 85 per cent of most doctors said they should tell patients or relatives about significant errors.
But this did not translate into practice.
Forty per cent of the doctors said they knew of a serious medical error in their hospital group or practice but 31 per cent admitted they had done nothing about it at least once."
It would be really easy to just blame the physicians for behaving this way, but as midwives, doulas, CBE's which of us can say we have direct knowledge of a colleagues' carelessness or incompetence, but haven't said anything?
