Malpractice

Do doctors make mistakes?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is yes.  However, you may be surprised at the frequency with which doctors make mistakes according to a recent article in JAMA. The study reports that more than 2 in 5 patients receives at least one misdiagnosis.

In 190 cases, a total of 68 unique diagnoses were missed. Most missed diagnoses were common conditions in primary care, with pneumonia (6.7%), decompensated congestive heart failure (5.7%), acute renal failure (5.3%), cancer (primary) (5.3%), and urinary tract infection or pyelonephritis (4.8%) being most common. Process breakdowns most frequently involved the patient-practitioner clinical encounter (78.9%) but were also related to referrals (19.5%), patient-related factors (16.3%), follow-up and tracking of diagnostic information (14.7%), and performance and interpretation of diagnostic tests (13.7%). A total of 43.7% of cases involved more than one of these processes. Patient-practitioner encounter breakdowns were primarily related to problems with history-taking (56.3%), examination (47.4%), and/or ordering diagnostic tests for further workup (57.4%). Most errors were associated with potential for moderate to severe harm.

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3 Comments

  1. I read with worry on how 2 out of 5 patients were misdiagnosed. I am sure that doctors their initial screening with the best intention in the world, but could the mistakes be placed down to tiredness and the long shifts

    JW

  2. Now it’s 10% – 15% of the doctors making misdiagnosis:
    The three main criteria for medical misdiagnosis include:
    False positive: That’s when they tell you that you have an illness when you do not have it.
    False negative: This occurs when they fail to identify the presence of an illness or disease.
    Equivocal results: Not giving you a straightforward diagnosis, with ambiguous answers.
    Let’s hope these numbers improve in the future.

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