The Attitudes and Experiences of Trainees Regarding Disclosing Medical Errors to Patients

Abstract

Although many trainees had disclosed errors to patients, only a minority had been formally prepared to do so. Formal disclosure curricula, coupled with supervised practice, are necessary to prepare trainees to independently disclose errors to patients by the end of their training.

Medical Errors Education for Students of Surgery: A Pilot Study Revealing the Need for Action

“…[2][3][4][5][6] Learners of medicine appreciate and benefit from opportunities to discuss medical errors that they have witnessed with medical colleagues and supervisory physicians in an open, reassuring, and nonthreatening environment. 4 Although the role of resident physicians in the prevention of medical errors has received considerable attention, recent studies have shown that medical students can also play a significant role in the prevention of medical errors.…”

Disclosing Harmful Mammography Errors to Patients

“…While the vignette asks radiologists to assume that this error delayed a cancer diagnosis, some radiologists may have been unwilling to make this assumption without having images to review, or may have been unsure whether the increasing calcifications on the previous film warranted a biopsy. Our prior work with physicians in different specialties by using a variety of error vignettes revealed a similar range in physicians' willingness to disclose errors, suggesting that our results reflect radiologists' disclosure attitudes rather than uncertainty about clinical nuances of the case (9,28,29,39,40).…”

Professional Integrity and the Role of Medical Students in Professional Self-Regulation

“…In that regard, medical students may pay a price even when residents and attendings have no explicit intention to retaliate. Other factors include a view that it may not benefit or even may harm the patient or the professional relationship to disclose [9,10,19,20]. Students may also be concerned that the patient may not understand the information presented or that the patient would not want to know [19], and many students may not have received training on how to disclose errors [19].…”

“…Thus, educational leaders should establish opportunities to formally teach how to approach medical errors and to integrate this teaching into a broader curriculum of patient safety and error prevention [19,41]. Students should be helped to learn from and cope with medical errors [42] and should see in real time how teams and leaders take accountability for medical errors and full disclosure.…”