Knowledgeable and Experienced Guidance

Should you really trust your doctor?

On Behalf of | Jun 3, 2016 | Doctor Errors |

People often blindly trust their doctors. They simply assume that the doctor has their best wishes in mind, as he or she is supposed to. The reality, though, is that doctors may only be thinking about themselves, and they may not be as trustworthy as they appear. Health Affairs recently carried out a study in which they talked to around 2,000 health care professionals. Below are some of the key points that they discovered:

— Roughly a third of doctors — 34 percent — said they didn’t completely agree when asked if they should tell patients about serious medical errors, some of which could be the basis for medical malpractice.

— About a fifth of doctors — 20 percent — said they’d followed through on this, not fully disclosing mistakes that were made in just the past 12 months alone. They said the reason they did it is that they thought they may be sued.

— Twice that many — about two-fifths — said they didn’t need to tell patients about a financial relationships that existed between them and companies that sold medical devices and/or drugs.

— About 10 percent admitted to lying outright to patients in the past year.

— Over half of the doctors — 55 percent — said they would be more positive than they should have been when telling patients about a prognosis, even if the facts made things out to be direr.

While it may be easy to trust a doctor, it’s very important to know what really goes on in the health care industry. If these things have caused you harm in North Carolina, you may be able to seek compensation.

Source: Men’s Health, “Can You Trust Your Doctor? Get the Truth at Your Next Visit,” Holly C. Corbett, accessed June 03, 2016