Grey's Anatomy Shake Your Groove Thing: A Case Study
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In an episode from Grey’s Anatomy Shake Your Groove Thing, a surgical intern named Dr. Grey was assisting an attending physician during an open-heart surgery (Shonda, 2005). Dr. Grey admitted to the patient’s husband that she might have punctured the heart with her fingernails. As a result of the mishap, she was called in to a meeting with the Chief Surgeon and the Administrator of the clinic. She was confronted and condemned for telling the patient about her mistake. However, Dr. Burke, a senior surgeon stands up for her. He admitted to the board that he made a mistake five years ago, when he accidentally forgot a towel inside a patient’s chest while performing surgery. He regretted not telling the truth and praised Dr. Grey for her bravery…show more content… There are various benefits and risks that affect physicians in disclosing errors. Physicians may not want to disclose errors because of emotional distress (Wu et al., 1997). Physicians have expressed that they have felt upset, guilty, self-critical depressed, and a low level of job satisfaction after making a medical error, it is also common for them to lose confidence in themselves (Waterman, Garbutt, Hazel, Dunagan, Levinson, Fraser & Gallagher, 2007). Disclosure of medical errors can limit the amount of referrals from other physicians. Physicians can lose their credentials, and even their medical licence.(Wu et.,al 1997). Furthermore, disclosing medical errors can be used against the physicians in the event that the patient decides to file a lawsuit. (Slovenko,…show more content… Health care systems, physicians, patient and legal barriers are some of the obstacles that deter physicians from disclosing errors (Moskop, Gelderman, Hobgood, & Larkin 2006). The first barrier is the Health care systems. Health care systems have strong interests in avoiding malpractice and furthermore, view medical errors as a major problem (Moskop et al., 2006). Physicians reported that the health organization does not adequately support them in coping with error related stress. This could possibly be because health care organizations do not value errors, and deter themselves away from that (Waterman etal., 2007). A hospital’s Emergency Department (ED) can create specific barriers on its own. The fast paced environment of an ED can increase errors. Because physicians need to react quickly, they have limited information about medical history of a patient and there are usually multiple transitions in care with other physicians, so when an error does occur the physicians may not have the chance to tell the patient (Moskop etal., 2006). The second barrier is the physicians’ barrier. Beliefs and attitudes of physicians can decrease the chance of an error being disclosed to a patient. A physician who is arrogant or narcissistic may assume that the duty of disclosing errors may not apply to them (Moskop et al.,