4 ms·
I'm sorry, but what's the point of this?
by valbaca 9y ago
I'm sorry, but what's the point of this?
- jbob2000 9y agoIn the US, doctors will not tell you if they made a mistake and caused your condition to worsen, or if the mistake caused the death of your loved one. In the UK, doctors are allowed (and by the looks of this memo, expressly encouraged) to inform the patient of their mistakes and to apologize.
- jslampe 9y agoI believe he was being facetious.
- DanBC 9y agoIn the UK there is a requirement - the duty of candour - to tell people a mistake has been made, and to apologise for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_candour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_candour I posted it here because I've seen a bunch of apologies also posted to HN recently, and most of them were lousy.
- dm319 9y agoWhy do people post apologies to HN? Any examples?
- arethuza 9y agoI've certainly apologized a few times - usually for writing something that is badly worded, unintentionally inflammatory or simply plain wrong. I certainly apologised profusely when I wrote something that annoyed dang.... :-)
- DanBC 9y agothere have been a few businesses that lost data, or got hacked, or shut down.
- eberkund 9y agoThat's because of the lawsuit culture in the US, apologizing for a mistake admits wrongdoing and could expose you to millions of dollars in damages.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoI had a then-teenage cousin who had a surgical...geez, either a breathing stent or a cerebrospinal shunt, I forget...installed backwards, resulting in minor permanent brain damage before the surgeon realized his mistake. This apparently involved the surgeon sprinting back into the operating room past my aunt and uncle, yelling "I screwed up your kid, meet me here with a lawyer in three hours!"
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoThe point is that you should apologize if your mistake harms someone. Refusing to own up to your errors is unprofessional. That's hardly limited to medicine.