Health Care Apology

An acceptance of guilt and a sincere apology, is mandatory for every wrong deed. This applies to health care field too. Admitting to your mistakes can be difficult especially when you are a healthcare provider. But as humans we do make errors and some errors can harm the patient and their family. This paper explains about the benefits of apology to the patient and their family in adverse events (Institute of Healthcare Improvement, 2016).
Apology is defined as a statement given by a person who has injured another one after he recognizes and admits the error, and communicates regret for having caused the damage. It is a major step towards restoring the trust in the relationship between the physician and victim and their family. Admission of
When they see the physician being apologetic, this need is met. This calms the sufferers and their family’s anger. As a result, there is less number of litigations. For example, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky, adopted the policy that they will take responsibility for their mistakes and apologize. In next ten years, they had a significant decrease in the net legal cost for the hospital (Jonathan R. Cohen, May 21, 2010).
Major roadblocks to apology are humiliation, fear of litigation, fear of losing the job and poor communication skills. To overcome these barriers, many policies are being adopted by the healthcare providers. They are trained to apologize in an appropriate and effective way. Ontario adopted the apology legislation in 2009. This apology law, which specifies that an apology is not allowed to be used against the physician in court, this is done to give confidence to the physician to apologize. Thus, healthcare workers can apologize to the patient and family without the fear that it can be used against them in court.
It restores some damage done and restores the trust between the health provider and the patient. We need to do what is right for the patient and apology of adverse events is part of doing the right thing. Institutions should have positive experiences with policies that demand disclosing and apologizing for medical errors. A sincere apology reduces the suffering of both clinicians and patient and their family (Robbennolt, J. K. 2009).

REFERENCES
Harvard University, Full Disclosure Working Group. When things go wrong: responding to adverse events March 2006. Retrieved from. www.macoalition.org/documents/respondingToAdverseEvents.pdf.
Institute of Healthcare Improvement 2016. Communicating with Patients after Adverse Events. Retrieved from http://app.ihi.org/lms/lessonpageworkflow.aspx?&CatalogGuid=4cc435f0-d43b-4381-84b8-899b35082938&CourseGuid=614af4d5-09ed-4c08-b495-59673b0a581a&LessonGuid=82f42955-31f0-40b2-bad2-c297a1e98f6c
Jonathan R. Cohen, Apology and Organizations: Exploring an example from Medical Practice (May 21, 2010). Fordham Urban Law Journal. Retrieved from. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=238886
Robbennolt, J. K. (2009). Apologies and Medical Error. Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, 467(2), 376–382.