Enlisting Help in the Analysis of Practice

Abstract

Most people find it threatening to have their work reviewed. For professionals, the threat may be real, since society often judges their shortcomings harshly and may devise regulatory, even punitive, solutions. A few physicians may, indeed, require regulatory sanctions, and all can benefit from reminders of their errors of omission and commission. Careful, constructive analysis of events in practice can motivate physicians to continue their education, whereas draconian penalties may drive some underground. The data on their practices then become unreliable, and their opportunity to profit from experience is lost. We distinguish clearly between formal external quality-assurance mechanisms and the improvement in medical practice that ensues from a well-motivated physician’s voluntary analysis of his practice.

Nothing is so difficult to deal with as a man’s own Experience, how to value it according to its amount, what to conclude from it, and how to use it and do good with it.

Peter Mere Latham¹