While it is true that all doctors make mistakes, it is equally true that most of us refuse to admit to or discuss them. Medical mistakes have always been shrouded in a conspiracy of silence through the ages, and this was because it was important to give patients the impression that doctors were infallible. Such a strategy may have been appropriate in the past, when doctors had few effective tools in their therapeutic armamentarium, and trust in the doctor was a vital element of the healing process.
This is why blind faith in the doctor was encouraged, and to keep the doctor on his pedestal, it was essential that he have an aura of infallibility around him. Given the prevalence of errors in our work, and one of our first principles being "first do no harm," it is strange that we talk so little about this problem. Perhaps it is because we view most errors as human ones and attribute them…
