Ethical Standards for Disclosing a Medical Error

Ethical Issues Involved in Disclosing Medical Errors

MEDICAL ERRORS ARE THE FIFTH LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH IN THE United States and result in annual costs of up to $29 billion, according to estimates from the Institute of Medicine (IOM). These figures suggest that medical mistakes occur commonly in medical practice. Indeed, 95% of physicians surveyed reported witnessing a medical error, and 61% of health care professionals believe errors are a rout...

Disclosing error to a patient.

Maintaining ethical standards in medical publishing.

All editors of medical journals have a duty to safeguard the integrity of the publishing process and must ensure that the articles that they publish do not infringe accepted ethical standards. It is, of course, the case that journals occasionally receive submissions the ethical standards of which raise concern, and in this respect The Journal of Laryngology & Otology (JLO) is no exception. Devi...

Standards for ethical publication.

In a previous editorial the editors of The Journal of Laryngology and Otology presented the Journal’s position with regard to ethical standards in medical publication. One of the developments recently introduced is a joint commitment by editors of journals of Otolaryngology to act in a coordinated manner in order to share information when a suspected breach of publishing integrity has occurred....

Ethical Standards for Groups

There has been consider able discussion about the ethical aspects of the group movement, which includes a variety of groups going under such names as T-groups, sensitivity groups and encounter groups. However, little if any progress has been made in developing guidelines or standards. There are at least two reasons for this lack of progress. One is that the problem is an exceedingly difficult o...