Podcast: Managing a Mistake
This podcast will teach you how to manage communicating a mistake to a patient or relative, which is a common scenario in the OSCE and indeed in real life. There are times where we as healthcare professionals make mistakes when managing our patients, even when we have their best interests at the forefront of our minds. In rare situations, the mistake may unfortunately lead to patient harm. In order to learn from our mistakes, it is vital to have an open policy with each other, sharing our mistakes when we make them and not judging others when they share theirs. By learning from our mistakes and making appropriate measures to avoid them recurring, we provide better patient safety.
This sort of scenario can be challenging and needs to be handled delicately. We will discuss how best to handle this sort of scenario here with key tips and an example.
Written and produced by: Rachel Pilling & Celine Lakra
Length: 7m 55s (3.62Mb)
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Keywords: apology; mistake; error; agreeing a plan; explaining; communication;
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If a patient insists on making a complaint, they are completely entitled to, and should not be coersed or feel pressurised to not make one. It is important that you show you respect their decision and are willing to help them understand more about the complaints service. You should talk to them about the Patient Advice and Liason Service (PALS - this is the usual method patients make a complaint) and offer them a leaflet to take away with them.
You should apologise again for the error and ask them if they'd like to meet you/your senior to discuss this again.
Just because the patient leaves saying they may indeed complain, this does not necessarily mean you've failed the station - so don't worry. The patient may be scripted to say this to every student anyway. It's how you handle that sticky situation that matters!