Have you ever considered why the doctors, nurses or surgeons that you see make the decisions that they do? Even if you didn’t understand the medical technicalities involved in the decision, it would still be fascinating to learn why they make the moves that they do, wouldn’t it? We bring this up because there is a growing sentiment that medical professionals take certain courses of action and perform certain procedures and tests as a means of “defensive” — or maybe more accurately, “protected” — medicine.
What this means is that medical professionals may make decisions in order to protect themselves or their medical institution — instead of making decisions that are best for the patient.
The irony, of course, is that by taking these defensive measures, medical professionals may actually be setting themselves up for problems with their patients. Say a doctor goes with a certain procedure that is conservative yet still eliminates a potential problem that the patient may have.
Well, if that test yields nothing but the elimination of a potential threat, then the time used doing that test could have been more productive attempting something else. Maybe that lost time leads to a patient suffering immense harm or even death.
The systemic problems in the medical field cause many of the medical malpractice and medical error cases that you commonly hear. But choosing to take conservative action simply so the medical professional or medical institution is insulated from potential legal action is truly abhorrent, and it needs to stop.
