[Archaea]

Mike and ER represent the spectrum in med mal.

The Medical Establishment takes the line that med mal almost never happens and that sufficient safeguards are in place to avoid all but the rarest of mistakes.

I would agree that if all physicians followed their training all of the time, very few mistakes would result in med mal harming a patient.

OTOH, with workloads and income expectations, mistakes occur in larger percentages than the medical establishment is wont to admit, yet not in the proportions the plaintiff's bar would have you believe.

ER arguing that nurses will alway catch the obvious mistakes is simply not true. With rushes, foreign nurses and the sometimes subservient attitude of nurses you can find nurses who won't question a doctor's orders. But plenty will question them and many mistakes are caught.

Mike is correct that hospitals especially and many physicians work immediately to cover up mistakes once something awful has happened. There are sincere, conscientious physicians who will self-examine upon a bad result, but the consequences of being too forthright are severe and militate against total honesty even with peer review protections in place.

It is a complex problem, but not aspect of the health care establishment encompasses enough of the issues for a universal review to be possible. In short, no matter who performs the study, it's likely to be slanted one way or another.