Casebook Volume 19 Issue 1
Interesting article in this month's Casebook magazine - the MPS's (medical protection society) mouth piece.
It makes a valid differentiation between defensive (bad) and defensible (good) medicine. Defensible medicine should be evidence based and therefore any treatment decision could be justified. Obvious examples of defensive medicine are over-investigation and risk avoidance behaviour. Risk averse behaviour is seen as a possible byproduct of the reporting of individual cardiac surgeons' outcomes in the UK.
As unnecessary investigations carry side-effects of their own and as patients become better informed and empowered, defensive medicine will ironically come to carry a significant risk of litigation of its own.
Anyway a very good read !
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