For Surgeons, Talking About Adverse Events Can Be Difficult: Study

(By Zhai Yun Tan for Kaiser Health News)

Dr. Thomas Gallagher has been through many tough conversations with patients. He remembers once standing in front of a patient and the patient’s family, preparing to tell them about a mistake that had occurred.

“This is a topic I think about all the time and it was still very nerve-racking and embarrassing,” said Gallagher, an internist and a professor at the University of Washington’s medical school specializing in quality and patient safety issues. The patient had been sent to another clinic an hour away to get an MRI, but because of a miscommunication, the MRI was done in the wrong area of the body and would have to be repeated. Read article here……

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

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