By
Cat Viglienzoni - July 14, 2010
The study of 2,000 respondents found that seventeen percent
of physicians had direct personal knowledge of an impaired or incompetent
colleague in their practice or hospital in the last three years. Of those, 67
percent reported that person, meaning a third did not. 'Impaired or incompetent'
covers a wide range of issues, from a drug problem to unfamiliarity with the
best way of treating a patient.
Dr. Catherine DesRoches of Massachusetts General
Hospital, who led the study, said the most common reason for not calling
attention to a colleague was that they assumed others would.
"They could easily think well, I don't need to report
this situation because I know of five other people that know about this
situation and one of them probably reported," she said.
However, some of the respondents did not feel it was
their responsibility to report their fellow doctors. The American Medical
Association mandates that doctors are ethically bound to report colleagues they
believe are unfit to practice, but 36 percent of those studied didn't
completely agree it was their responsibility to do so.
"We had about a third of physicians who did not
completely agree with the professional commitment to report all instances of
significantly impaired or incompetent colleagues," DesRoches said.
Other reasons physicians did not report indicated a lack
of confidence in the system, either fearing that nothing would happen or that
their colleague would be punished too strictly.
Doctors who would be affected more by a loss of the
colleague - those in single and two-person practices - were the least likely to
have reported them. Only 44 percent of those who knew a colleague was impaired
or incompetent told authorities about the person. While larger hospital systems may have systems in place for doctors to report colleagues, smaller practices may have to turn to outside authorities, and their doctors may not know how the reporting process works.
(Photo
courtesy: AP Images)
