Monday, November 23, 2009

Independent nonsense: negligent doctors

As usual, the Indo provides some useless statistics, this time on malpractice cases. What they tell us is:

A senior house officer -- a grade of junior doctor -- was most likely to be involved (74pc) as against 14pc for registrars and 8pc for consultants.
What they don't tell us is what percentage of patients are dealt with by each type of doctor. So if only 50% of patients were dealt with by junior doctors but they were involved in 74% of malpractice cases then that's a black mark against junior doctors and would be something worth knowing. Elsewhere in the article it's stated that they deal with "the majority" of cases. Without these other figures, the statistics are not just useless, they're possibly quite misleading.

in reference to: http://www.independent.ie/national-news/ae-blunders-responsible-for-one-in-seven-medical-claims-1951185.html (view on Google Sidewiki)

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