How Many Doctors Will Tell About The Incompetence Of Colleagues

How Many Doctors Will Tell About The Incompetence Of Colleagues.
A philanthropic inquiry of American doctors has found that more than one-third would hesitate to turn in a ally they thought was incompetent or compromised by substance abuse or mental health problems. However, most physicians agreed in proposition that those in charge should be told about "bad" physicians. As it stands, said Catherine M DesRoches, auxiliary professor at the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, "self-regulation is our best alternative, but these findings suggest that we honestly demand to strengthen that. We don't have a good alternative system".

DesRoches is lead author of the study, which appears in the July 14 come of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The American Medical Association (AMA) and other veteran medical organizations hold that "physicians have an ethical obligation to report" impaired colleagues. Several states also have essential reporting laws, according to background information in the article.

To assess how the widely known system of self-regulation is doing, these researchers surveyed almost 1900 anesthesiologists, cardiologists, pediatricians, psychiatrists and forebears medicine, general surgery and internal medicine doctors. Physicians were asked if, within the recent three years, they had had "direct, personal knowledge of a physician who was impaired or inexpert to practice medicine" and if they had reported that colleague.

Of 17 percent of doctors who had direct awareness of an incompetent colleague, only two-thirds actually reported the problem, the survey found. This without considering the fact that 64 percent of all respondents agreed that physicians should report impaired colleagues. Almost 70 percent of physicians felt they were "prepared" to account such a problem, the study authors noted.