Supportive Measures for Medical Error Disclosure from the Viewpoints of Residents in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences

Medical error is one of the most important ethical and legal issues that sometimes occur when a variety of health care practices are provided by healthcare professionals. Due to the necessity of medical error disclosure and lack of adequate personal and organizational support in this field, this study investigates strategies for facilitating error disclosure as well as increasing the variety of supportive measures from the perspective of residents. This was a descriptive cross-sectional study with statistical population including all residents of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. The sample size was obtained using Morgan table as 248 participants. Data were collected using a researcher-made questionnaire (with descriptive and valid reliability) and analyzed by SPSS software using descriptive and inferential statistics. In this study, increasing support facilities for medical error disclosure (mean 4.38) was the most important factor, and increasing the lawfulness and transparency of activities in the medical setting (mean 4.32) was the second factor affecting the promotion of medical error disclosure. Also, medical liability insurance (mean 4.80) was the most important supportive measure. The fear of legal and judicial consequences was reported as the most effective factors on the error concealment and having experienced lawyers and cultivation effects of mass media declared as the way out. In the present study, although most residents agreed with medical error disclosure, but due to the wide range of risk management problems that affect error disclosure, they found it necessary to establish a support system. Given the teamwork in health-care delivery, support should be given to all members of the treatment team.