Medical accidents: attitudes and opinions of doctors

One thousand members of a United Kingdom medical protection organisation, working in the specialties of obstetrics and gynaecology, orthopaedic surgery, general surgery and anaesthetics, were surveyed in order to determine what factors they believed to be important in causing accidents in medicine and whether they were in favour of research being carried out in this area. The response rate was 50.3%. The majority of respondents believed that medical accidents should be investigated and that human error is a major factor in their causation. There was some disagreement between consultants and senior house officers about factors believed to cause accidents. The former ranked lack of skills as most important followed by failure to consult while the latter ranked fatigue and stress first followed by failure of senior staff to supervise adequately. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for further research in the area of medical accidents and approaches to accident prevention.