Lately, quite a stir has been made about the utility of saying “I’m sorry” when there has been a medical error or a bad outcome. New information confirms that the act of apologizing has actually been shown to reduce litigation. This makes sense. People sue because they are angry. An apology often disarms an angry person. I’ve seen it work.

Not long after finishing residency, I took a job as medical director at a very nice hospital in rural Ohio. I received a call from a woman who was understandably upset about the care she received. She was quite reasonable and wanted to meet to discuss what had transpired. I agreed to meet and reviewed the chart and talked to the physician involved ahead of the lawyerless meeting.

I learned that a lumbar puncture had been done because of headache. There were 15 WBCs in the CSF. The young physician involved mistakenly thought that this was normal. The patient presented to another hospital the following day and the LP was repeated (I’m not sure why). She had many more white cells in the second sample and was admitted for what turned out to be viral meningitis.

The patient was unhappy about the delay in diagnosis and the need for a second painful procedure. Rather than blame the other hospital for doing a second procedure unnecessarily, or suggest that her illness was “benign,” I simply apologized for the error. It was an error in judgment whether I called it that or not. I explained that the physician involved felt badly about it and had learned from the encounter. She left the meeting satisfied. We wrote off the bill. No lawsuit was filed.

One could claim that in the end there was no significant loss and no basis for a lawsuit. Of course, this person would have said this when Eisenhower was president. Even 20 years ago, the plaintiff’s lawyers were tripping over themselves to get cases. If the patient wanted to file, she would have found someone to do it. This simple apology likely prevented an expensive and painful trip through our civil “justice” system.

I’m convinced that apologizing is good. The corollary of this is that covering things up is bad. People get mad when they learn of a cover-up. And you know what they do when they are angry.

So, what’s the fuss about? This is all pretty straightforward.