Percepción de los residentes de medicina familiar sobre sus errores clínicos tras dos años de formación

Abstract

Objective To describe how Family and Community Medicine residents perceive and deal with their clinical errors. Material and methods Design: A descriptive, cross-sectional study using a questionnaire. Setting: Primary Care. Teaching Health Centres of the Family and Community Medicine Teaching Unit of Murcia (Spain). Participants: All residents (27) who qualified from 2007 to 2011, after two years training. Main measurements: A self-completed questionnaire of 11 questions with four response options, distributed and collected in person, hand-written and anonymous. Results All 27 residents responded. All (100%) residents believe that all doctors made errors when attending their patients. A total of 88.9% believed that they had made some clinical error in the time they had practiced their profession, and 62.9% knew that they had made some error in the last 2 months. Almost all (96.3%) thought that it was possible to make mistakes and not be aware of them, and 70.3% believe that it was certain that we think that we have made fewer mistakes than are actually produced. Conclusions The residents were aware of having made clinical errors, including some serious ones (22.2%). Some of them (11.1%) believe that some of these errors have had significant repercussions on the health of their patients. Almost half (48.1%) believe that these errors have had significant repercussions for themselves. All have learned from their errors. They also identified some of the repercussions of their errors, and 77.7% said they knew what to do to avoid errors.