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Eighty-two percent of physicians have seen a colleague make a mistake or give sub-optimal care, but have reported only 15% of serious incidents that resulted in death or disability, according to a recent survey of physicians in the United Kingdom.

Patient Safety Monitor Alert, June 29, 2004

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Eighty-two percent of physicians have seen a colleague make a mistake or give sub-optimal care, but have reported only 15% of serious incidents that resulted in death or disability, according to a recent survey of physicians in the United Kingdom.

The anonymous poll of 2,575 physicians was conducted earlier this month by doctors.net.uk. It is the largest survey of its kind ever carried out in the UK, according to the Web site.

Nearly all (97%) respondents agreed that a confidential reporting system similar to that used by the airline industry would lead to improved safety and patient care. However, 81% said that they do not trust their existing government agencies to run such a system.

"Doctors across the UK have shown a remarkable honesty and frankness about the scale of the problem and a demand that things change for the benefit of their patients," says Neil Bacon, MD, founder of doctors.net.uk. "Other professions, most notably airline pilots, have shown for many years that no-blame reporting and shared-learning reduces accidents and saves lives. The medical profession [is] now demanding similar systems."

Survey respondents overwhelmingly called for a no-blame culture that would encourage them to report errors and near-misses. Among the comments that physicians added in a free-text portion of the survey were

• " I think that it is very important to change the culture regarding mistakes in medical practice, and this idea would be a significant step on the way to doing so."
  
• "The only doctors who don't make mistakes are those who don't do any work. Identifying the most common mistakes and areas where doctors need more education can only be beneficial for patient care."
  
• " I have worked in hospitals were reporting of all near-misses and events was taken seriously and with understanding...thus all 'events' were shared, discussed, and prevented form happening again. I now work somewhere where any comment on a near-miss is viewed as threatening and as such no comments are made, even when they should be."

Earlier this month, a separate poll in the United States found that physicians are more likely to blame nurses for medical errors.

In addition, most hospital physicians, nurses, and administrators disagree about who is in charge of patient safety, what constitutes a medical error, how errors should be reported, and what actions should be taken to prevent them. News of that study appeared in the June 16 issue of Patient Safety Monitor.

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