Would physicians' time be better spent determining how to improve patient safety and health care quality?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23179028

Perspect Biol Med. 2012 Summer;55(3):339-49. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2012.0027.

Forgive me: medical error and the poetics of forgiveness.

Becker D, May N, Plews-Ogan M.

Source

Department of Medicine/Division of General Medicine, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, VA 22908-0761, USA. dmb2y@virginia.edu.

Abstract

Alexander Pope, in his Essay on Criticism, proposes that "To err is human; to forgive divine." This essay considers the latter half of that proposition and includes quotes from doctors who participated in a study of learning and growing through adversity. Doctors, like poets, find it necessary to put their moral and psychological dilemma into words. Language shapes the experience and offers a means of partial resolution.