Patient perception is vital when reporting medi...( When reporting medical errors patien...),Health

When reporting medical errors, patients' perceptions of their physicians' disclosure may be key to gaining their trust, according to researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. However, a positive perception of the disclosure has little effect on the lawsuit risk a physician faces. Researchers examined volunteer responses to several videos depicting the disclosure of an adverse event along with variations in the extent to which a physician accepted responsibility. They found that a patient's perception of what was said was more important than what was actually said by the physician. In addition, researchers found that in this study a full apology and acceptance of responsibility by the physician in error was associated with better ratings and greater trust. The results are published in the September 1, 2009, issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

"Viewers were more likely to want to sue physicians that offered an incomplete apology or who did not accept responsibility," said Albert Wu, MD, MPH, lead author of the study and a professor with the Bloomberg School's Department of Health Policy and Management. "When viewers thought that the doctor had apologized and taken responsibility, they gave the doctors much higher ratings with 81 percent of viewers reporting trusting the physician and 56 percent reporting they would refer the physician. However, despite the positive reaction to perceived apology or responsibility, viewers were only slightly less inclined to want to sue."

Researchers showed 200 adult volunteers from Baltimore City videotaped vignettes that depicted physicians disclosing one of three adverse events to patients. The vignettes varied in the extent of their apology and acceptance of responsibility. Viewers were then asked to evaluate the physicians. Actors were used to create the adverse events including a year-long delay in noticing a malignant-looking lesion on a mammogram, a c
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