08.03.11
Surprising results from doctors’ survey
A fifth of doctors do not ‘strongly agree’ that patient welfare should come before their own financial interests, a study has shown.
The figure was the same in the UK as in the US.
The survey, ‘Professional values and reported behaviours of doctors in the USA and UK’, also showed that almost one in five UK doctors has had direct experience of an incompetent or poorly performing colleague in the past three years.
Three-quarters of these doctors sounded the alarm, but one in three of those who had not done so gave ‘fear of retribution’ as the reason.
The survey was published online in BMJ Quality and Safety this week, although the surveys of thousands of doctors were conducted back in 2009.
Only 80% of respondents ‘strongly agreed’ that patient welfare should come before their own financial interests, which the study’s authors called “surprising”. Only around 60% of doctors felt they should disclose financial relationships they had with pharmaceutical companies to their patients.
Not all doctors agreed that it was “never appropriate” to have a sexual relationship with a patient.
UK doctors were less likely than their US peers to ‘completely agree’ that all the pros and cons of a procedure should be fully explained to a patient, but when things went wrong, UK doctors were more likely to agree that significant medical errors should be disclosed.
The full paper is at: http://press.psprings.co.uk/qs/march/qs48173.pdf
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