If you weren’t afraid enough of going to the doctor’s office, let us help you with that: about a 1/3 of all doctors believe it’s okay to withhold information… especially when it comes to mistakes and malpractice.
And it’s not just that:
Nearly two-fifths of the respondents said they did not disclose their financial relationships with drug and device companies. And more than 55% of physicians said they often or sometimes described a patient’s prognosis in a more positive manner than the facts might support.
Great! That’s out of 1,891 physicians, and who’s to say whether or not they all told the truth there, too?
Really though, this is terrifying. But we do forget — doctors aren’t some infallible race of alien beings, they’re human and they make errors too. Lying about it is what makes it scary.
Some do it out of not wanting to get sued. Some do it because they’re not very good at communicating. Some do it because time is money, and some do it because, well, giving bad news sucks.
All aren’t very good reasons to do it, but we get it. As humans, we understand.
Plus, medicine is really complicated, so sometimes it’s just easier to skate around things.
The only thing we can do as patients is the patient (see what we did there??) with the doctors, and ask them point-blank to be honest with us. We can handle it, and we need to not be as so fast to sue all the time!
[Image via AP Images.]
