Physicians' Attitudes Toward Defensive Medicine and Medical Errors in Palliative Care: A Cross‐Sectional Study
Year: 2025
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: RATIONALE: Medical errors represent a major issue for healthcare professionals. Although they may not always cause direct harm to patients, timely reporting of such errors is an important step in improving safety and reducing malpractice risk. As the number of these lawsuits rises, physicians often resort to defensive medicine practices. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study is to evaluate the attitudes, behaviours and knowledge levels of physicians working in palliative care services with resprect to defensive medicine. METHOD: This multicenter, cross-sectional and analytical study, 110 physicians working in the Palliative Care Service participated in the study between 01.10.2023 and 31.10.2023. Demographic information, defensive medicine attitude scale and medical error attitude scale were applied to the participants. RESULTS: Sixty-two of the participants were female and 48 were male. Based on the data, 5.5% of the participants had a moderate, 64.5% had a high, and 30.0% had a very high level of defensive medicine attitudes. Resident physicians rated their defensive medicine attitude with higher scores than specialist physicians. In addition, physicians with less than 5 years of experience have higher positive defensive medicine scores. There is a significant relationship between age and the medical error attitude scale score. Most of the participants received palliative care training, but they stated that they did not have sufficient knowledge about defensive medicine. CONCLUSION: Although the defensive medicine scores of the participants are high, additional training is necessary to close the gaps in knowledge. There is also a promising situation in terms of medical error awareness.
DOI: 10.1111/jep.70316
Institution: Sağlık Bilimleri Üniversitesi
Language: English
Subfield: Pharmacy
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4416161646