Error and medicine at defensive: medical ethics and patient’s safety

Abstract

Based on the ethical imperative of Medicine’s,

primun non nocere, this article presents consideration of medical ethics focusing on error and the practice of defensive medicine, whose main purpose seems often to be linked to the protection of professional to the detriment of the patient’s interest. It is developed, from studies undertaken in the United States, a reflection on such linkage and the so-called “pacts of silence”, which end by generating uncertainties and mistrust regarding physician-patient relationship in society at large. In consonance to the above mention research, I concluded by considering that hiding a medical error does not solve this complex problematic, and it may have mean consequences to medical practices related to increasing exams requests that produce increase in health costs as well as hampers access to services. It considers, additionally, that the State cannot be absent in this crucial discussion.