Many errors taking place because physicians not listening to patients.

Many errors taking place because physicians not listening to patients.


Modern Healthcare (2/24, Carlson) reports, "The latest report from the Dartmouth Atlas Project -- Improving Patient Decision-Making in Health Care, which was conducted in conjunction with the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making -- concludes that if physicians educated and listened to their patients more thoroughly, unwanted variation would decline." Investigators took an "in-depth look at medical conditions involving decisions for elective care in cases where the statistics don't recommend a single course of action." They found that much of the difference is attributable to "physicians' preferences, not differences in patient populations. But in cases of elective procedures, giving a patient a treatment he doesn't want is as much an error as wrong-site surgery," the co-author of the study said.