iRADiX

Role of Apology in Practice

One of the things the average doctor doesn’t have time to do is

catch up with the things he didn’t learn in school, and one of the

things he didn’t learn in school is the nature of the human society,

its purpose, its history, and its needs….If medicine is necessarily

a mystery to the average man, nearly everything else is necessarily

a mystery to the average doctor.

Milton Mayer

“Would you accept an apology” the senior doctor asked the relative.

Later, he asked the resident whether he would like to apologize.

The three of them then met and a face-to-face discussion led to restoration of harmony.

“We are all human” the relative said after it was all over, accepting the factthat mistakes can occur.

One of my mentors told me to explain to a senior Neurologist how I had reported on the ICA as narrowed on MR Angiography when the Doppler report had shown it to be completely occluded.

He could have done it himself, and ticked off the junior. He knew the senior Neurologist very well. But he left it to me to do this difficult part of the communication which was also a multilayered lesson.

• Memories
• Mapping
• Museums
• Motivations