Cargando…
Internal Medicine Residents and the Practice of Defensive Medicine: A Pilot Study Across Three Internal Medicine Residency Programs
Background Defensive medicine is becoming increasingly prevalent in the United States and is estimated to cost billions of dollars in excess healthcare spending. There is evidence that the practice of defensive medicine starts early in the medical career. Defensive medicine has been investigated amo...
Autores principales: | , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Cureus
2020
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7053673/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32181105 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.6876 |
_version_ | 1783503082639851520 |
---|---|
author | Borgan, Saif M Romeus, Laniel Rahman, Saleh Asmar, Abdo |
author_facet | Borgan, Saif M Romeus, Laniel Rahman, Saleh Asmar, Abdo |
author_sort | Borgan, Saif M |
collection | PubMed |
description | Background Defensive medicine is becoming increasingly prevalent in the United States and is estimated to cost billions of dollars in excess healthcare spending. There is evidence that the practice of defensive medicine starts early in the medical career. Defensive medicine has been investigated among residents in high medico-legal risk specialties, but there is a paucity of information on its prevalence among internal medicine residents. Objective To examine the prevalence and patterns of defensive medical practices among internal medicine residents. Methods We conducted an online survey among the residents of three internal medicine residency programs in the 2018-2019 academic cycle. We invited all internal medicine residents within the selected programs to participate through email and asked them to complete an electronic survey assessing defensive medical practices. Results A total of 49 out of 143 residents participated in the study (response rate: 34.3%); 55% (n = 27) of the residents who participated considered the risk of being sued during residency to be low, compared to 40.8% (n = 20) who considered it to be moderate and 4.1% (n = 2) who considered it to be high. Defensive medical practices were found to be widely prevalent (40.0-91.3%) among internal medicine residents across all three clinical training stages. Assurance defensive practices were more common than avoidance practices. Conclusion Defensive medical practices, especially of the assurance type, were widely prevalent among our sample of internal medicine residents. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7053673 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Cureus |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-70536732020-03-16 Internal Medicine Residents and the Practice of Defensive Medicine: A Pilot Study Across Three Internal Medicine Residency Programs Borgan, Saif M Romeus, Laniel Rahman, Saleh Asmar, Abdo Cureus Internal Medicine Background Defensive medicine is becoming increasingly prevalent in the United States and is estimated to cost billions of dollars in excess healthcare spending. There is evidence that the practice of defensive medicine starts early in the medical career. Defensive medicine has been investigated among residents in high medico-legal risk specialties, but there is a paucity of information on its prevalence among internal medicine residents. Objective To examine the prevalence and patterns of defensive medical practices among internal medicine residents. Methods We conducted an online survey among the residents of three internal medicine residency programs in the 2018-2019 academic cycle. We invited all internal medicine residents within the selected programs to participate through email and asked them to complete an electronic survey assessing defensive medical practices. Results A total of 49 out of 143 residents participated in the study (response rate: 34.3%); 55% (n = 27) of the residents who participated considered the risk of being sued during residency to be low, compared to 40.8% (n = 20) who considered it to be moderate and 4.1% (n = 2) who considered it to be high. Defensive medical practices were found to be widely prevalent (40.0-91.3%) among internal medicine residents across all three clinical training stages. Assurance defensive practices were more common than avoidance practices. Conclusion Defensive medical practices, especially of the assurance type, were widely prevalent among our sample of internal medicine residents. Cureus 2020-02-04 /pmc/articles/PMC7053673/ /pubmed/32181105 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.6876 Text en Copyright © 2020, Borgan et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Internal Medicine Borgan, Saif M Romeus, Laniel Rahman, Saleh Asmar, Abdo Internal Medicine Residents and the Practice of Defensive Medicine: A Pilot Study Across Three Internal Medicine Residency Programs |
title | Internal Medicine Residents and the Practice of Defensive Medicine: A Pilot Study Across Three Internal Medicine Residency Programs |
title_full | Internal Medicine Residents and the Practice of Defensive Medicine: A Pilot Study Across Three Internal Medicine Residency Programs |
title_fullStr | Internal Medicine Residents and the Practice of Defensive Medicine: A Pilot Study Across Three Internal Medicine Residency Programs |
title_full_unstemmed | Internal Medicine Residents and the Practice of Defensive Medicine: A Pilot Study Across Three Internal Medicine Residency Programs |
title_short | Internal Medicine Residents and the Practice of Defensive Medicine: A Pilot Study Across Three Internal Medicine Residency Programs |
title_sort | internal medicine residents and the practice of defensive medicine: a pilot study across three internal medicine residency programs |
topic | Internal Medicine |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7053673/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32181105 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.6876 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT borgansaifm internalmedicineresidentsandthepracticeofdefensivemedicineapilotstudyacrossthreeinternalmedicineresidencyprograms AT romeuslaniel internalmedicineresidentsandthepracticeofdefensivemedicineapilotstudyacrossthreeinternalmedicineresidencyprograms AT rahmansaleh internalmedicineresidentsandthepracticeofdefensivemedicineapilotstudyacrossthreeinternalmedicineresidencyprograms AT asmarabdo internalmedicineresidentsandthepracticeofdefensivemedicineapilotstudyacrossthreeinternalmedicineresidencyprograms |