Young doctors may lie to their superiors to avoid embarrassment and, in rare cases, to cover up medical mistakes, survey results show. While this deception is not frequent, it is “troubling” whenever it occurs, researchers say.
In a survey of 222 hospital residents, 36% said they would lie to a colleague to avoid taking his or her shift, while 6% would protect a colleague by substituting their own urine in another resident’s drug test.
Regarding patient care, 15% said they would lie in a medical record to protect a patient’s privacy. Moreover, 5% would cover up a medical mistake by saying they gave a patient a test they did not. Researchers from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey found that if asked by a senior doctor to recall a patient’s lab result, 14% of residents would make something up rather than admit they did not know. This was true of 19% if the senior doctor was likely to “ridicule and embarrass” the resident.
Researchers said that it is possible a resident’s willingness to deceive colleagues and superiors could affect patients’ care. But, they said, “more likely, it would erode trust between colleagues, which only affects care indirectly.” Lying directly about patient care, researchers noted, was uncommon among the survey respondents.
Moral issues, such as lying, “ought to be addressed systematically in the medical school curriculum and during residency,” researchers added.
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