Better doctors focus on mistakes
The Atlantic, December 19, 2011
Everybody makes mistakes. But far too few people take the opportunity to learn from them. We'd all be better people if we did. And for doctors, acknowledging errors could mean the difference between a patient's life or death. In a study where doctors were faced with a simulated medical emergency and had to choose from uncertain treatment options, a scenario requiring a certain amount of trial and error, doctors who paid more attention to their mistakes fared much better than those who focused on their treatment successes.
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