How to explain defensive medicine to a patient

April 27, 2007

The question should be rephrased to “How close to 100% certain do you want to be?” As I stated before, if a patient understands the risks of an unnecessary test to get closer to the impossible goal of 100% accuracy and chooses to proceed, I normally would then order the test.

Scalpel
with an example regarding chest pain in the ER.



Related posts:

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  2. Defensive medicine: Only in the USA
  3. Defensive medicine is aggressive
  4. Defensive medicine op-ed reaction
  5. Patient perceptions and defensive medicine
  6. Patient satisfaction vs pain relief
  7. A cancer missed, who’s responsible for telling the patient?


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