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A comment on Medical error is third biggest cause of death in the US, experts say. Parent comment

Re:Medical error is third biggest cause of death in the US, ... by WalterBright on Thursday May 05, 2016 @01:33AM (#11634188)
Punishing doctors for making human errors will not result in perfection. It will result in doctors hiding and denying their mistakes.

A better approach is to acknowledge that people will make mistakes, and work with doctors to identify why the mistakes are made and how procedures can be altered to prevent those mistakes in the future. This is how it is done in the aviation business. Punishment will not work.

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Re:Medical error is third biggest cause of death in the US, ... by MertsA on Thursday May 05, 2016 @05:26AM (#11634793)
>Punishing doctors for making human errors will not result in perfection.

Yeah but it's not just about punishment. A small portion of medical professionals account for a disproportionately large amount of all medical malpractice claims. The worst 1% accounted for a third of all malpractice claims according to a recent study. I agree that we shouldn't be cracking down on individual mistakes, but we certainly do need to crack down on doctors who are significantly more likely to harm patients in the future.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/857885

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