MISTAKES IN MEDICAL PRACTICE

Thurman • Institutional Responses to Medical Mistakes

Health care institutions must decide whether to inform the patient of a medical error. The barriers to disclosure are an aversion to admitting errors, a concern about implicating other practitioners, and a fear of lawsuits and liability. However, admission of medical errors is the ethical thing to do and may be required by law. When examined, the barriers to such disclosures have little merit, ...

Mistakes in the usage of anatomical terminology in clinical practice.

BACKGROUND Anatomical terminology serves as a basic communication tool in all the medical fields. Therefore Latin anatomical nomenclature has been repetitively issued and revised from 1895 (Basiliensia Nomina Anatomica) until 1998, when the last version was approved and published as the Terminologia Anatomica (International Anatomical Terminology) by the Federative Committee on Anatomical Termi...

The criminalisation of medical mistakes in Canada: a review.

Medical publishing in 2015: mistakes to be careful to avoid.

In 2009, my surprise at the amount of unethical behavior uncovered during my first 4 years as Editor-in-Chief of CHEST led me to comment on the role of conflict of interest and scientific misconduct in the reporting of scientific information.1 While a very small part of scientific misconduct was determined to be intentional, by far the greater part was deemed unintentional, since it was not int...

Disclosing medical mistakes: a communication management plan for physicians.

INTRODUCTION There is a growing consensus that disclosure of medical mistakes is ethically and legally appropriate, but such disclosures are made difficult by medical traditions of concern about medical malpractice suits and by physicians' own emotional reactions. Because the physician may have compelling reasons both to keep the information private and to disclose it to the patient or family, ...