The Rate and Pattern of Disclosing Medical Errors in Iranian Physicians and Healthcare Staff

Ethics is of great significance in the medical community, i.e., because of the importance of this profession. How a physician manages a medical error, regardless of its cause, is among the major issues of medical ethics. Given the nature of the medical profession, medical malpractice may occur at any time during treatment. Medical malpractice is frequent in Iran and other countries.

The present cross-sectional study was conducted using a researcher-made checklist. The study participants attended legal medicine training and refresher courses in Mashhad and Sabzevar Cities, Iran, from June 2012 to June 2017.

During five years, 1537 cases were enrolled in the study. Most of the study participants were female (n=832, 52.89%), with a Mean±SD age of 32.3±3.4 years. All study participants, except for 25 (1.58%) subjects answered “I do not disclose the malpractice” to the question “would you disclose your medical malpractice with treatable harm to the patient, while he/she gets hurt by not revealing the malpractice?”; the rest [1463 (92.94%) individuals] answered “I disclose the malpractice, but I do not mention that the harm is due to malpractice, and 85 (5.40%) participants answered, “I disclose the malpractice to the patient and mention that the harm is due to malpractice and it could be cured.”

The study findings suggested that the majority of study participants did not tend to disclose their malpractice to patients and their families.