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Here’s a Rx to stay out of court
By Lauren | March 30, 2009
It’s Doctors Day, and a great time to consider what the business community could learn from the medical profession. It’s no secret that medical malpractice suits have become a major drain on doctors and hospitals in the United States. Consequently, some medical professionals are taking a new approach to managing their litigation risk.
The traditional response to medical error was to clam up, hire an attorney, and fight the injured patient and family in court. It was expensive, stressful, and deeply damaging to the doctor-patient relationship. Patients expect physicians to care for them, not to turn adversarial at the first sign of a problem, so having a doctor refuse to admit to an error or apologize often felt like a profound betrayal.
Thankfully, there’s a movement afoot in the medical profession to handle error in a less defensive way. When mistakes occur (and they inevitably will, because doctors are as human as the rest of us), physicians and hospitals are now starting to disclose what happened, apologize, and work with patients and families to manage the consequences with healing treatment and fair reparation. This approach not only reduces litigation costs, it respects patients’ dignity and allows doctors to retain their professional integrity.
Business could take a cue from the medical profession on this score. In any setting, litigation is an expensive and painful way to solve problems. It’s high time that executives in non-medical fields learned to handle mistakes by disclosing the errors, apologizing, and making appropriate amends. Business relationships can be healed that way too.
Topics: Apologies, Business Ethics, Professional Ethics, business communications, ethics |