Australian doctors are more likely to be sued for medical negligence if they are unhappy, overworked, working in rural areas, or if they have suffered a recent injury or illness according to new research from the University of Melbourne.
The Australian-first study, published on the 2nd of June in the British Medical Journal, also found that doctors with an ‘agreeable’ personality were less likely to be sued.
The research team, led by Dr Owen Bradfield and Professor Matthew Spittal, analysed the responses of over 12,000 Australian doctors to the Medicine in Australia Balancing Employment and Life (MABEL) survey between 2013 and 2018.
“It is critical that we try to better understand why some doctors are sued: a mistake by a doctor can have tragic consequences for patients and can be costly for the health system,” Dr Bradfield said.
Claims against doctors are increasing, with growing evidence that adversarial medicolegal processes are harmful to both doctors and patients, with medical liability systems in Australia, the UK and the USA adding significantly to the economic costs of healthcare.
“Patients who suffer harm from a medical error can sue the doctor concerned in order to seek redress, answers, and assurances that mistakes will not be repeated,” Dr Bradfield said.
“Therefore, understanding why that doctor made a mistake and was sued can help us reduce medical errors and improve healthcare quality.”
Professor Spittal added that knowledge gained from earlier studies show older male doctors who performed surgical procedures and who had prior complaints were at the highest risk of claims.
“However, because not all older male surgeons are actually sued, we suspected that work, health, and personality factors might also hold the key to explaining these differences,” Professor Spittal said.
“This is the first study to longitudinally analyse demographic, vocational and psychosocial predictors of medical negligence claims in Australia. It is also the first to adjust for confounding factors and to stratify according to sex.”
Doctors who completed the survey answered questions about their age, sex, specialty, personality, health, life satisfaction, working conditions, and whether they had previously been sued.
“This allowed us to analyse and correlate work, health and personality factors with a doctor’s risk of being sued,” Dr Bradfield said.
“This is important because, unlike demographic and historical predictors, vocational and psychosocial risk factors are potentially modifiable through education and support programmes.
Dr Bradfield said the identification of additional risk factors could be important for employers, regulators and health practitioners who care for unwell doctors.
“[For example], our study reveals that acute and recent injury may also contribute to this risk – this suggests that the quality of treatment and workplace support offered to doctors experiencing recent illness or injury can impact on patient care,” Dr Bradfield said.
“Our results also reinforce previous recommendations that preventive efforts to improve doctors’ health and well-being need to be intensified: we need to reduce doctor fatigue by addressing long working hours.
“We also need to create supportive work environments and target interventions that improve doctors’ overall wellbeing, such as through healthy lifestyle and positive psychology programs – this could reduce the risk of doctors being sued and improve patient safety.”