Episode 3: How clinicians can manage their anxiety about litigation complaints and become more contented

Show notes

THE CASE
M is a hard-working clinician in primary care aiming for high professional standards; they passed all their exams at medical school and post grad training, and continue to engage in regular CPD. To their surprise, medicine in practice seems to get more and more difficult as time goes on. Many patients have vague symptoms, unlike any textbooks, the guidelines are complex and hard to remember, they hear a lot about complaints or being sued and some grumpy unsatisfied patients make M wonder what they are doing wrong. Now M gets anxious they may have missed something, going over their cases in their mind, rechecking their case notes, looking for errors. They find it hard to stop worrying about complaints or being sued; why did no one tell them that getting the right answers was so difficult? In this episode, Avril and James invite a couple of younger GPs, Sarah MacDermott and Joseph Rylands, to talk about what their concerns are around litigation. We go over the numbers around litigation and we discuss approaches as to how to reduce that risk, but also how to deal with what you should do if get a complaint. At the end we discuss many tips and suggestions around litigation that may help you, at least a little bit, be a more contented clinician.