This is a blog for the Mental Health Policy Class at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work.

December 6, 2007

Doctors don't report colleagues, errors

Nearly half of doctors surveyed say they have failed to report an impaired or incompetent colleague or a serious medical error, and more than one-third say they would order an unneeded MRI scan for an insistent patient - though these actions conflict with what the physicians consider the heart of their professional obligations.

The survey is the first broad attempt to measure the success of a new movement called "medical professionalism." Arguing that government regulation, financial incentives, and public reporting alone will not improve the quality and efficiency of medical care, physicians groups in the past several years have been promoting a new code of professional values, meant to modernize the ancient Hippocratic Oath.

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