“Raise your hand if you know of a physician you work with who should not be practicing because he or she is dangerous.”
Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won’t Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care
by Marty Makary
“One of my favorite public health professors, Harvard surgeon Dr. Lucian Leape, at a national surgeons’ conference, opened the gathering’s keynote speech by looking out over the audience of thousands and asking the doctors to “raise your hand if you know of a physician you work with who should not be practicing because he or she is dangerous.” Every hand went up.
Incredulous at this response, I took to asking the same question whenever I spoke at conferences. And I always got the same response. Every doctor knows about this problem— but few talk about it. Every day, people are injured or killed by a medical mistake that might have been prevented with a modicum of adherence to standardized guidelines. The silence about the problem has paralyzed eff orts to address it— until now”
