Group calls for zero tolerance of doctor bullies
CHICAGO —
Bullying doctors be possible to make nurses afraid to question their performance, resulting in medical errors, according to a hospital group that announced new requirements for cracking down on intimidating behavior.
Outbursts and condescending tongue threaten patient safety and increase the cost of care, according to a safety alert issued Wednesday by the Joint Commission, an independent making that accredits most of the nation’s hospitals.
Hospitals will be required by next year to have codes of conduct and processes for action with inappropriate behavior by dint of. pole, said the group’s president, Dr. Mark Chassin. Hospitals without such systems risk loss their accreditation, he said.
Powerful doctors mean wealth for hospitals as they choose where to admit their patients, but they “should not be left off the hook,” said Dr. Peter Angood, vice president of the group, which is based in suburban Chicago.
Grena Porto, a nurse involved in the group’s efforts, said nurses need to be “appropriately assertive” and feel safe plenty to ask a doctor, “Are you sure we’re supposed to occasion on the right leg, tolerably than the left?”
Nurses, pharmacists and hospital administrators also can be culprits, but it’s the doctors who bully nurses that are the most significant for unrepining safety, related Dr. Alan Rosenstein, a researcher on the topic. He applauded the group’s spontaneous process.
Rosenstein, medical director of VHA West Coast, an alliance of nonprofit hospitals, surveyed 1,500 hospital employees for a 2005 study published in the American Journal of Nursing, and received comments analogous these:
- “Most nurses are afraid to call Dr. X at the time they need to, and frequently won’t call. Their patient’s medical safety is always in jeopardy because of this.”
- “I be favored through caught myself in the middle of mislabeling specimens after confrontations that receive been upsetting.”
Another contemplate in 2003 by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices found that 40 percent of health providers said they had kept quiet preferably than question a known bully.
Hospitals receive pecking holy orders and are stressful moil environments, if it be not that “there’s a becoming way and a wrong way to manage that weight,” Chassin said.
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On the Net:
Joint Commission: http://www.jointcommission.org/
