Bad outcomes sometimes do happen. To prevent his, the patient has to bear some responsibility:
This news just in: I am not a perfect physician. I thought I was, but I am not. When I take care of patients I sometimes make mistakes, do the wrong thing, forget to do the right thing, or don’t do everything I should.
You can tell me I’m a bad physician, make me hate myself, boil me in malpractice oil, send me back to medical school for the rest of my life, and I still will not practice perfect medicine. To increase my odds of doing that I need help, but not just any help; I need my patients’ help to get it right more of the time.
In fact, as a physician I don’t just need your help with that; I need you to see that as your job as a patient. You can say that’s putting the burden of my inadequate performance unfairly on your shoulders, and call the Board of Medicine to report a quack ducking his responsibility, but I don’t care about that. What I do care about is my patients, enough to tell them I’m not perfect, and that it is their job to help me take better care of them.
