Medicine is supposed to be a self-regulating profession where substandard practices are rectified internally.
But a survey of US physicians reveals this is not always so. Of almost 1900 physicians surveyed, only 64% agreed that they should report all instances of impairment or incompetence. Only one-third of those who had direct knowledge of a problem colleague in the past 3 years had reported it.
When asked why they hadn’t reported the impairment or incompetence, the most common response was they “thought someone else was taking care of the problem.”
PositiveTip: We don’t like this kind of statistic, but how many of us are willing to shoulder the burden of reporting incompetence when necessary? Do you wait for someone else to “do the right thing”?