Ever lost your cool in a hospital? New research suggests you would be wise to stay calm.
Criticising doctors and nurses while they’re caring for you or a loved one increases the risk of potentially catastrophic errors, a study of intensive care units has found.
With thousands of people dying every year due to preventable errors in hospitals, a team of American researchers set out to test whether rude parents undermined the care of their children.
Doctors and nurses from 39 neonatal intensive care units in Israel were asked to work through five mock clinical scenarios with mannequins to replace seriously ill infants.
When actors playing parents berated the teams with lines such as “I knew we should have gone to a better hospital”, the team’s performance dropped.
Compared to other teams where parents made neutral comments on the sidelines, the scolded teams scored lower on all measures including time to diagnosis, diagnostic accuracy, information sharing, treatment planning and communication between team members.
The researchers concluded that rudeness could lead to “potentially catastrophic clinical outcomes” and was more of a problem than sleep deprivation for health professionals when it came to factors influencing the quality of care… Read More>>
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
