Medical error reporting, patient safety, and the physician.
Physicians have traditionally been reluctant to report errors, due in part to logistical barriers but also due to cultural barriers that inhibit error reporting. This survey of practicing obstetrician/gynecologists found that only slightly more than half of respondents felt comfortable reporting errors they had witnessed. Interestingly, physicians who had themselves been the victim of an error, or who had a family member injured as a result of an error, were more likely to both report errors and describe witnessing errors in their own practice. The authors hypothesize that this finding may represent the availability heuristic.