Determination of the Physician’s Experience of the Practices, Antecedents and Outcomes of Defensive Medicine Practices

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the practices, antecedents and outcomes of defensive medicine practices. For this purpose, this study was designed as a phenomenological research study using qualitative research methods. In-depth interviews were conducted with physicians who were practitioners and, thus, the experiencers of defensive medicine. The target population of the research consisted of 1,153 physicians working in the Sakarya city centre. The in-depth interviews were conducted with 21 physicians who agreed to participate. The resulting data were encoded and analysed using the NVIVO 12 software. As a result of this research, definitions of defensive medicine practices, positive defensive medicine and negative defensive medicine have been constructed using the expressions used by physicians. Besides, we obtained results indicating the practices of defensive medicine, the antecedents of defensive medicine and the outcomes of defensive medicine. The results of this study contribute to the literature in terms of providing comprehensive knowledge of defensive medicine.