Evaluation of Physicians' Perception of Patient Safety Incidents Including Disclosure Utilizing Hypothetical Clinical Vignettes

Abstract

Purpose: We investigated physicians' responses to a series of clinical vignettes consisting of patient safety incidents, with and without disclosure of patient safety incidents (DPSI). Methods: An anonymous survey was conducted to investigate physicians’ responses to the DPSI via online communities of physicians, and additional participants were recruited using a snowballing sampling method. We evaluated physicians’ responses to the DPSI using eight hypothetical scenarios (HS) from the following perspectives: thoughts regarding medical errors, revisiting the physician, recommendation, lawsuit, criminal prosecution, trust score, and compensation amounts. We used the chi-square test to evaluate the overall differences in response rates among the scenarios. Statistical analyses were performed using the Student's t-test to compare the trust scores and compensation amounts. Results: A total of 910 physicians participated in this survey. An overall comparison of trust scores among HS showed that HS 1 (unclear medical errors, minor harm, and DPSI) had the highest trust score. In contrast, in the opposite scenario, HS 8 (clear medical errors, major harm, and DPSI not conducted) received the lowest scores. Cases with minor harm to patients (HS 1, 2, 5, and 6) showed lower compensation amounts than the others (HS 3, 4, 7, and 8). Physicians were more likely to think of situations with DPSI as not having medical errors (53.1% vs. 55.2%). In addition, the scenarios with DPSI were evaluated favorably in terms of intention to revisit, recommend, suit, and engage in criminal proceedings. Physicians showed higher trust scores (6.2 vs 5.4) and gave lower compensation amounts ($27.7 million vs $28.1 million), although there was no significant difference in terms of compensation amounts to the physician conducting DPSI. Conclusion: Our study showed overall positive perceptions regarding DPSI among Korean physicians.