Doctors are human, too

From Pauline Chen's article "When Doctors Make Mistakes" in the New York Times:

While doctors should strive for as few errors as possible, “you can’t go through training without making an error unless you are not taking care of patients,” Dr. West said. “And if you are really invested in the care of patients, there’s a personal cost when things don’t go well.”
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Greater support for doctors from both the training process and patients could help to improve patient outcomes and strengthen the patient-doctor relationship. “In 21st century medicine, there’s no reason for a patient to accept suboptimal care,” Dr. West said. “At the same time, patients need to balance their expectations against the reality of the physician experience. And the medical establishment needs to do a better job of helping patients understand what physician lives are really like.”

Click here to access the article.