Tips for Avoiding Medical Malpractice

As a doctor there is always the threat of Malpractice. Patients sometimes experience disappointment, anger and surprise during a visit which can sometimes lead to miscommunication and medical errors. Here are some tips to reduce your chances for Malpractice:

Common Practices in the Medical Environment:

1. Protect your computers from unauthorized access to avoid patient information from being leaked.

2. When using Social Media (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, blogs, etc.) use them for meeting colleagues not for sharing patient information or physician-patient communication. See below for more information about this topic.

During Patient Interaction:

3. Confidently introduce yourself, shake hands with the patient, call them by name, maintain good eye contact wash your hands in front of them and lastly sit down to be at their level.

4. To have good bed side manner look for common ground such as a hobby, sports, jewelry etc…

5. Pay attention to everyone else in the room, i.e. family members who accompanied the patient.

6. Practice active listening by saying “If I understand you correctly, you said that…”

After Patient Examination:

7. Clearly communicate discharge instructions both verbally and in writing, ask if the patient has any questions and say “Thank you for…”

Don’t forget:

8. Your patient will tell 20 other people about his or her interaction with you.

9. Don’t ignore any comments regarding any symptoms a patient is feeling.

10. Don’t get upset, flustered, or impatient.

Hopefully, these tips will help you when you are seeing a patient.

If you would like more information on Malpractice please consider looking at the following*: 

“Life after lawsuit: How Doctors pick up the pieces” by Alicia Gallegos from amednews: http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2011/05/16/prsa0516.htm

“Bury bad Doctor Reviews with a strong physician social media presence” from blog writer Kevin Pho, MD: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/12/bury-bad-doctor-   reviews-strong-physician-social-media-presence.html

 “Doctors’ legal remedies can defeat online attacks” from Alicia Gallegos from amednews:http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2011/12/12/prsa1212.htm

 

More Resources:

 “How Malpractice hurts doctors and their future patients” from blog writer Kevin Pho, MD: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/05/malpractice-hurts-doctors-future-pat...

 “Why patients file medical malpractice lawsuits” from blog writer Kevin Pho, MD:http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/06/patients-file-medical-malpractice-la...

 “How Would a Plaintiff Attorney Use Your Tweets” from blog writer Bryan Vartabedian, MD of 33 charts:http://33charts.com/2011/05/plaintiff-attorney-tweets.html

 “Physicians, Risk and Opportunity in the Digital Age” from blog writer Bryan Vartabedian, MD of 33 charts:http://33charts.com/2011/12/physicians-risk-opportunity-social-media.html

 “6 Things I Never Talk About on Twitter” from blog writer Bryan Vartabedian, MD of 33 charts:http://33charts.com/2010/07/6-things-i-never-talk-about-on-twitter.html

*Please note if the link will not open, copy and paste it into your browser.