Original Research Article
Year: 2017 | Month: July | Volume: 7 | Issue: 7 | Pages: 45-52
Knowledge, Attitude, Practice about Disclosure of Medical Errors among Residents of a Tertiary Care Hospital, Dakshina Kannada
Dr. Shiekh Amir1*, Dr. Vina Ravi Vaswani2*, Dr. Ravi Vaswani3**
1Postgraduate, 2Professor and Head, 3Professor,
*Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, **Department of Internal Medicine,
Yenepoya Medical College, Deralakatte, Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
Corresponding Author: Dr. Shiekh Amir
ABSTRACT
Medical errors are considered to be grave threats to patient’s safety. Effective error reporting is an obligatory tool to prevent and diminish its occurrence. This study was conducted to determine the knowledge, attitude, and practices about disclosure on medical error reporting among postgraduates from a tertiary care hospital in Dakshina Kannada. 61 postgraduates, both male and female from medical and dental faculty, within age group of 23 years to 33 years were included in the study. We aimed at performing a cross-sectional study on residents in a tertiary hospital setting in Mangalore to evaluate knowledge, attitude, and practice about disclosure of medical errors and negligence in resident doctors and its ethical aspect. The results showed that majority of doctors have adequate knowledge regarding medical errors. Attitude of doctors and practice suggest knowledge and awareness about handling the medical error is need of the day and they readily agreed to disclose the error to patient and face the consequences and future prevention. Still most acceptable approach for disclosure in this study was disclosure to colleague and then to disclose to patient. Awareness of legal consequence of medical error is needed to be addressed to doctors. Based on the results, it can be concluded that an improvement in medical error reporting system is still needed. Strengthening education about reporting is one of the ways to do such improvisation. Reporting system that may encourage health practitioners to report without having any doubt must also be established properly in hospitals so as to improve patient care.
Key words: Medical error, Ethics, Knowledge, Attitude, Disclosure, Healthcare