In the January 14, 2008 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers published results of a study that looked at whether physicians supported the concept of reporting medical errors and at whether they actually reported errors themselves.

The study found that while three-fourths of the physicians surveyed said they would report a medical error that caused minor harm to a patient, only 17.8 percent had actually reported a minor error. In addition, 90 percent of the physicians said they would report an error resulting in major harm, though only 3.8 percent had ever reported that kind of error.

The study also found that many physicians didn’t know who to report errors to, or what type of errors should be reported.

“The results of this study suggest that physicians’ attitudes about the value of error reporting may not be matched by actual behavior,” the authors of the study concluded. “If correct, the potential causes of this discrepancy ought to be addressed.”

When taking into account the number of both reported and unreported errors, authors came to the conclusion that only 36 percent of the physicians surveyed acknowledged making any error.

“We know that’s probably not the whole story,” said Dr. Lauris C. Kaldjian, researcher in the study. “There’s a certain amount of underreporting.”

The authors of the study stressed the need for health care institutions to establish an environment that emphasizes the significance of error reporting.

Source: Charles Bankhead, “Physicians believe in reporting errors but rarely do,” MedPage Today, January 15, 2009.