Opinion: When doctors don’t tell the truth

Researchers from the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston created a survey based on the Charter on Medical Professionalism. While a majority of the nearly 2,000 doctors polled believed that physicians should never lie to patients or fail to inform them of the risks and benefits of a procedure or treatment, a large number also revealed that they had not been completely honest or transparent over the past year. More than half had described a patient's prognosis more optimistically than warranted. More than 10 percent had said something untrue.