Missing the needle in the haystack: diagnostic errors in neurological emergencies within Canadian emergency departments.

Background:Medico-legal complaints against physicians are a significant source of anxiety and could be associated with defensive medical practices that may correlate with poor patient outcomes. Little is known about patient concerns brought to regulatory bodies and courts against dermatologists in Canada.Objective:To characterize factors contributing to medico-legal complaints brought against dermatologists in Canada.Methods:The Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA) repository was queried for all closed cases involving dermatologists over the past decade. Aggregate, anonymized data was reviewed and case outcomes, patient harm, and contributing factors were extracted.Results:Nearly one-fifth of all dermatologists who are CMPA members have been named in at least one medico-legal case between 2013 to 2022. A total of 396 civil-legal actions or College complaint cases involving dermatologists were closed at the CMPA during this timeframe. The most common patient allegations were deficient assessment (34%), diagnostic error (28%), and unprofessional manner (22%). Nearly half of patients experienced a harmful event, the majority of which were asymptomatic or mild. The most frequently identified contributing factors related to providers were poor clinical decision making (n = 73), lack of situational awareness (n = 67), and conduct and boundary issues (n = 59). Team factors included a breakdown of communication with patients (n = 124).Conclusions:Improved communication with patients for informed consent, treatment plans, clinical follow-up, and documentation of thorough clinical patient assessments can improve patient satisfaction and health outcomes, and mitigate dermatologists’ medico-legal risk.

ObjectivesPhysician documentation plays a central role in the delivery of safe patient care. It describes a physician’s clinical decision-making and supports essential communication between healthcare providers within the patient’s circle of care. Good documentation can potentially also decrease a physician’s medico-legal risk. This study provides examples of documentation issues attributed to physicians practicing emergency medicine as identified by peer experts in civil legal actions, regulatory authority complaints (College) and hospital complaints (collectively, medico-legal cases) in Canada.MethodsWe conducted a descriptive study and content analysis of medico-legal cases involving emergency department physicians from a national repository at the Canadian Medical Protective Association. Cases with peer expert criticism of an emergency physician’s documentation, which were closed between 2016 and 2020, and occurred in an emergency department were included in our analysis.ResultsOf the 1628 cases involving emergency medicine, our inclusion criteria identified that absent or insufficiently detailed documentation was present in 24% of cases (391/1,628). A detailed review of 20% of the cases (79/391), selected randomly, found that documentation issues were most often associated with the assessment and investigation stage of care. This pertained to documenting details of the clinical examination, relevant medical history, diagnosis, and differential diagnosis.ConclusionsFor physicians practicing emergency medicine, criticism of documentation was frequently observed in medico-legal cases. Based on the findings of this study and the expert criticism related to documentation, emergency medicine physicians may consider reflecting upon their documentation of the care provided to determine if their documentation provides a clear and accurate chronicle of the care and the rationale for their clinical decisions.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43678-023-00576-1.

Retrospective descriptive study. The aim of this study was to describe closed medicolegal cases involving physicians and spine surgery in Canada from a trend and patient safety perspective. Spine surgery is a source of medicolegal complaints against surgeons partly owing to the potential severity of associated complications. In previous medicolegal studies, researchers applied a medicolegal lens to their analyses without applying a quality improvement or patient safety lens. The study comprised a 15-year medicolegal trend analysis and a 5-year contributing factors analysis of cases (civil legal and regulatory authority matters) from the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA), representing an estimated 95% of physicians in Canada. Included cases were closed by the CMPA between 2004 and 2018 (trends) or 2014 and 2018 (contributing factors). We fit a linear trend line to the annual rates of spine surgery cases per 1000 physician-years of CMPA membership for physicians in a neurosurgery or orthopedic surgery specialty. We then applied an ANOVA type III sum of squares test to determine the statistical significance of the annualized change rate over time. For the contributing factors analysis, we reported descriptive statistics for patient and physician characteristics, patient harm, and peer expert criticisms in each case. Our trend analysis included 340 cases. Case rates decreased significantly at an annualized change rate of -4.7% (P = 0.0017). Our contributing factors analysis included 81 civil legal and 19 regulatory authority cases. Most patients experienced health care-related harm (89/100, 89.0%). Peer experts identified intraoperative injuries (29/89, 32.6%), diagnostic errors (14/89, 15.7%), and wrong site surgeries (16/89, 18.0%) as the top patient safety indicators. The top factor contributing to medicolegal risk was physician clinical decision-making. Although case rates decreased, patient harm was attributable to health care in the majority of recently closed cases. Therefore, crucial opportunities remain to enhance patient safety in spine surgery.Level of Evidence: 4.

There is little known about the medico-legal risk for infectious disease specialists in Canada. The objective of this study was to identify the causes of these medico-legal risks with the goal of improving patient safety and outcomes. A 10-year retrospective analysis of Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA) closed medico-legal cases from 2012 to 2021 was performed. Peer expert criticism was used to identify factors that contributed to the medico-legal cases at the provider, team, or system level, and were contrasted with the patient complaint. During the study period there were 571 infectious disease physician members of the CMPA. There were 96 patient medico-legal cases: 45 College complaints, 40 civil legal matters, and 11 hospital complaints. Ten cases were associated with severe patient harm or death. Patients were most likely to complain about perceived deficient assessments (54%), diagnostic errors (53%), inadequate monitoring or follow-up (20%), and unprofessional manner (20%). In contrast, peer experts were most critical of the areas of diagnostic assessment (20%), deficient assessment (10%), failure to perform test/intervention (8%), and failure to refer (6%). While infectious disease physicians tend to have lower medico-legal risks compared to other health care providers, these risks still do exist. This descriptive study provides insights into the types of cases, presenting conditions, and patient allegations associated with their practice.

ObjectivesThis study provides an overview of the key medico-legal issues associated with attempted or completed suicide in Canada. Specifically, we identify factors that were criticized and found to contribute to medico-legal risk in these cases.MethodsA national repository was retrospectively searched for cases involving patients who attempted or completed suicide while under the care of a physician. The study included cases closed at the Canadian Medical Protective Association between 2013 and 2023. The study involved in- and outpatients who attempted or completed suicide. The frequencies and proportions of patient safety events and medico-legal risks for physicians were calculated by exploring factors that contributed to each incident.ResultsA total of 378 cases were identified, involving 460 physicians. The majority of patients in these cases experienced a healthcare-related harm (224/378, 59%). Psychiatrists were involved in 61% (231/378) of cases. The most common reasons for patient/family complaints were deficient assessments, diagnostic errors, and communication breakdowns with the patient or their family. The most common contributing factors identified by peer experts were deficient assessments of a suicidal patient and inadequate documentation.ConclusionsThis study addressed the gap in the published literature of healthcare-related contributing risk factors associated with a patient safety incident from Canadian medico-legal cases. The most common omissions identified by peer experts were comprehensive assessment and clear documentation. Physicians treating suicidal patients may reduce their medico-legal risk by completing and documenting thorough and timely suicide risk assessments.Plain Language Summary TitleInvestigation of factors leading to physicians' legal risks when their patients attempted suicide.

BackgroundPoint-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) has become a core diagnostic tool for many physicians due to its portability, excellent safety profile, and diagnostic utility. Despite its growing use, the potential risks of POCUS use should be considered by providers. We analyzed the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA) repository to identify medico-legal cases arising from the use of POCUS.MethodsWe retrospectively searched the CMPA closed-case repository for cases involving diagnostic POCUS between January 1st, 2012 and December 31st, 2021. Cases included civil-legal actions, medical regulatory authority (College) cases, and hospital complaints. Patient and physician demographics, outcomes, reason for complaint, and expert-identified contributing factors were analyzed.ResultsFrom 2012 to 2021, there were 58,626 closed medico-legal cases in the CMPA repository with POCUS determined to be a contributing factor for medico-legal action in 15 cases; in all cases the medico-legal outcome was decided against the physicians. The most common reasons for patient complaints were diagnostic error, deficient assessment, and failure to perform a test or intervention. Expert analysis of these cases determined the most common contributing factors for medico-legal action was failure to perform POCUS when indicated (7 cases, 47%); however, medico-legal action also resulted from diagnostic error, incorrect sonographic approach, deficient assessment, inadequate skill, inadequate documentation, or inadequate reporting.ConclusionsAlthough the most common reason associated with the medico-legal action in these cases is failure to perform POCUS when indicated, inappropriate use of POCUS may lead to medico-legal action. Due to limitations in granularity of data, the exact number of civil-legal, College cases, and hospital complaints for each contributing factor is unavailable. To enhance patient care and mitigate risk for providers, POCUS should be carefully integrated with other clinical information, performed by providers with adequate skill, and carefully documented.

Promoting Best Practices in Assisted Human Reproduction

Introduction: In a busy emergency department (ED), effective communication is integral to the provision of safe medical care. Physicians working in the ED interact with multiple team members including patients, allied healthcare professionals and other physicians, who all need to understand their verbal and written instructions. Our study's objective was to identify and describe communication problems occurring in the ED setting, and how these problems contributed to patient safety events and increased medico-legal risk for physicians. Methods: The Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA) is a not-for-profit, medico-legal organization which represented over 97,000 physicians at the time of this study. We conducted a retrospective descriptive analysis where we extracted five years (2013-2017) of CMPA data describing closed medico-legal cases occurring in the ED involving physicians (any specialty) who experienced complaints due to communication issues. We then applied an internal contributing factor framework to identify data themes. Data were summarized using descriptive statistics. Results: We identified 517 eligible cases involving 521 patients (some cases involved >1 patient). We found that 99.8% (520/521) of patients experienced some form of healthcare-related harm in the ED. Specifically, there was poor communication between: the physician and patient or patient's family (202/517, 39.1%); two or more physicians (79/517, 15.3%), and physicians and other healthcare providers (55/517, 10.6%). Inadequate documentation was observed in more than half of the cases (324/517, 62.7%) and poor team communication affected physicians’ decision making process (326/517, 63%) in areas such as deficient assessments, inadequate investigations, failure or delay to attend to the patient, and disposition decisions. Conclusion: Team communication issues are prevalent among physician medico-legal cases occurring in the ED. Efforts to strengthen communication skills may enhance patient safety and reduce medico-legal risk.

The birth of the NETT: NIH-funded network will launch emergency neurological trials

To measure patient satisfaction with care delivered by nurse practitioners (NPs) in emergency departments (EDs) in Canada using a psychometrically valid survey. All patients who received care from an NP in six participating EDs in Ontario province over a 1-week period were asked to complete a self-administered patient satisfaction survey designed specifically to assess satisfaction with NP care in EDs. One hundred and thirteen patients completed the survey. Principal components analysis of the survey revealed three factors or subscales: Attentiveness, Comprehensive care, and Role clarity. Scores on the three subscales indicated that patients were satisfied with Attentiveness (M = 3.72, SD = 0.38) and Comprehensive care (M = 3.52, SD = 0.49) and had a moderate understanding of Role clarity (M = 2.99, SD = 0.66). Participants with higher income levels reported higher levels of satisfaction with the attentiveness they received, whereas patients with previous experience with an NP reported higher levels of satisfaction with the comprehensive care they received. There was no appreciable increase in patient satisfaction with the NP based on age, gender, education, or health status. These findings indicate that attentiveness, comprehensive care, and role clarity are reflected by the NP in emergency healthcare settings as indicated by the patient's responses to the survey. This study supports that meeting expectations is a critical component of patient satisfaction.

ObjectivesDiagnostic errors are common in the emergency department (ED), but few studies have comprehensively evaluated their types and origins. We analysed incidents reported by ED physicians to determine disease conditions,...

Diagnostic Errors in the Emergency Department: A Systematic Review

Diagnostic errors contribute to as many as 70% of medical errors. Prevention of diagnostic errors is more complex than building safety checks into health care systems; it requires an understanding of critical thinking, of clinical reasoning, and of the cognitive processes through which diagnoses are made. When a diagnostic error is recognized, it is imperative to identify where and how the mistake in clinical reasoning occurred. Cognitive biases may contribute to errors in clinical reasoning. By understanding how physicians make clinical decisions, and examining how errors due to cognitive biases occur, cognitive bias awareness training and debiasing strategies may be developed to decrease diagnostic errors and patient harm. Studies of the impact of teaching critical thinking skills have mixed results but are limited by methodological problems.This Perspective explores the role of clinical reasoning and cognitive bias in diagnostic error, as well as the effect of instruction in metacognitive skills on improvement of diagnostic accuracy for both learners and practitioners. Recent literature questioning whether teaching critical thinking skills increases diagnostic accuracy is critically examined, as are studies suggesting that metacognitive practices result in better patient care and outcomes. Instruction in metacognition, reflective practice, and cognitive bias awareness may help learners move toward adaptive expertise and help clinicians improve diagnostic accuracy. The authors argue that explicit instruction in metacognition in medical education, including awareness of cognitive biases, has the potential to reduce diagnostic errors and thus improve patient safety.

Studies focusing on minor head injury in intoxicated patients report disparate prevalences of intracranial injury. It is unclear if the typical factors associated with intracranial injury in published clinical decision rules for computerized tomography (CT) acquisition are helpful in differentiating patients with and without intracranial injuries, as intoxication may obscure particular features of intracranial injury such as headache and mimic other signs of head injury such as altered mental status. This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of intracranial injury following minor head injury (Glasgow Coma Scale [GCS] score ≥14) in intoxicated patients and to assess the performance of established clinical decision rules in this population. This was a prospective cohort study of consecutive intoxicated adults presenting to the emergency department (ED) following minor head injury. Historical and physical examination features included those from the Canadian CT Head Rule, National Emergency X-Radiography Utilization Study (NEXUS), and New Orleans Criteria. All patients underwent head CT. A total of 283 patients were enrolled, with a median age of 40 years (interquartile range [IQR] = 28 to 48 years) and median alcohol concentration of 195 mmol/L (IQR = 154 to 256 mmol/L). A total of 238 of 283 (84%) were male, and 225 (80%) had GCS scores of 15. Clinically important injuries (injuries requiring admission to the hospital or neurosurgical follow-up) were identified in 23 patients (8%; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 5% to 12%); one required neurosurgical intervention (0.4%, 95% CI = 0% to 2%). Loss of consciousness and headache were associated with clinically important intracranial injury on CT. The Canadian CT Head Rule had a sensitivity of 70% (95% CI = 47% to 87%) and NEXUS criteria had a sensitivity of 83% (95% CI = 61% to 95%) for clinically important injury in intoxicated patients. In this study, the prevalence of clinically important injury in intoxicated patients with minor head injury was significant. While the presence of the common features associated with intracranial injury in nonintoxicated patients should raise clinical suspicion for intracranial injury in intoxicated patients, the Canadian CT Head Rule and NEXUS criteria do not have adequate sensitivity to be applied in intoxicated patients with minor head injury.

Background: Incarcerated patients with neurological complaints present substantial diagnostic and care-delivery challenges in emergency departments (EDs). We delineate the clinical spectrum, severity, and outcomes among incarcerated patients managed in an ED with an embedded neuro-emergency expert model. Methods: A retrospective observational study of adult ED visits for neurological symptoms was conducted from September 2018 to June 2025 at a government-designated regional emergency center serving multiple correctional facilities. Incarceration was confirmed in the electronic medical record. Extracted variables included demographics, chief complaint, comorbidities, triage and acuity scale, Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), neuroimaging, ED diagnoses, and outcomes (hospital admission, ICU care, ED/in-hospital mortality). Results: Sixty-five patients were included (median age 57.0 years [IQR 47.0-64.5]; 95% male). Chief complaints were altered mental status (36.9%), hemiparesis (21.5%), and seizures (13.8%). On arrival, 40.0% had GCS ≤ 12, including 23.1% with severe impairment (GCS 3-8). Non-contrast head CT was obtained in 95.4% and diffusion-weighted MRI in 38.5%. Frequent diagnoses were psychiatric/functional neurological disorder (16.9%), metabolic encephalopathy (15.4%), and acute ischemic stroke (12.3%). Serious conditions (stroke, hypoxic brain injury, central nervous system infection, status epilepticus, and neuroleptic malignant syndrome) were diagnosed in 41.5%. Hospital admission occurred in 63.1% (ICU care in 47.7%); in-hospital mortality was 10.8%. Conclusions: ED visits by incarcerated individuals with neurological complaints were often linked to serious diagnoses, ICU use, and mortality, challenging assumptions of exaggeration. Over two in five had stroke, hypoxic brain injury, central nervous system infection, or status epilepticus. The findings support rapid, systematic, bias-aware evaluation with early neurological involvement, clear imaging triggers, safety protocol, and expedited transfers from correctional facilities.