Patient perceptions and defensive medicine

One of many reasons why too many tests are ordered:

Some patients have significant misperceptions about the way medicine is, or should be, practiced. Even if these patients have no basis for their misperceptions, all they need to do is complain about an emergency physician and the doctor will hear about it. There is a constant dynamic tension in the ED: administrators and hospital boards want patients to be happy, but physicians know that patient happiness doesn’t always flow from proper medical care.

Related posts:

1. Cover your ass, defensive medicine
2. Defensive medicine op-ed reaction
3. My take: Slow medicine, destroying the medical home, animosity, patient communication
4. How to explain defensive medicine to a patient
5. Re-certification: Stoking the CME industry
6. Defensive medicine
7. Is moral distress preventing doctors and nurses from providing good patient care?

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Tagged as: emergency, hospital, patient