PubMed Health⌕ Search
Home/Archive/PubMed

PubMed · 15016939

How to avoid being sued in clinical practice.

G Panting
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Challenges to clinical management are a fact of professional life. Every doctor must expect to become embroiled in complaints and claims from time to time and be prepared to justify why they managed a particular case in the way that they did. Good medical practice is defensible practice, which depends upon staying within the limits of your own expertise, keeping up to date and conducting audit, ensuring your administration is effective and that patients are not allowed to slip through the net, that you communicate effectively with patients, their carers and colleagues, and that medical records recall all salient facts relating to the patient. If things go wrong, be open, investigate the facts, explain the situation fully to the patient, and do not be afraid to apologise.

Explore related subjects

CommunicationDefensive MedicineHumansInformed ConsentMalpracticeMedical AuditMedical RecordsPhysician-Patient RelationsJournal ArticleReview

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

G Panting. 2004. How to avoid being sued in clinical practice.. https://doi.org/10.1136/pgmj.2003.016279

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related citations

PubMed2007

Information-sharing among couples considering multifetal pregnancy reduction.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the information-sharing strategies of couples considering fetal reduction, and the impact of these strategies on the chances of encountering hostility in their social networks. DESIGN: Cross-sectional design of semistructured qualitative interviews, coded with respect to sharing strategies and level of personally directed hostility encountered. SETTING: Multiple Pregnancy Management Program, Comprehensive Genetics, New York, New York. PATIENT(S) AND INTERVENTION(S): Fifty women and their partners who were making a first visit to our maternal-fetal management facility, in order to consider the possibility of multifetal reduction as a pregnancy-management strategy. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Development of information-sharing strategies, and the chances of encountering personally directed hostility regarding multifetal reduction associated with more and less selective strategies. RESULT(S): Four information-sharing strategies emerged from the analysis. Two of these strategies were relatively open (extended network, and both parents). Two other strategies were relatively selective (qualified family and friends, and defended relationship). The selective strategies were significantly less likely to encounter to encounter personally directed hostility (odds ratio, 3.88; 95% confidence intervals, 0.87-17.30). CONCLUSION(S): Selective sharing of information for couples considering multifetal prgnancy reduction is a potentially useful strategy for moderating potentially stressful relationships in their social networks. Clinics should find a way of integrating the discussion of selective sharing into their clinic's cultural repertoire of patient-support services.

Communication↗