According to the Charter on Medical Professionalism , physicians are supposed to be honest with their patients. So does that always happen? In a word: no. A survey of 1,891 doctors published in the journal Health Affairs finds a significant percentage have been less than completely forthright with patients in the past year, including avoiding disclosure of medical errors and giving a too-rosy prognosis. The survey, which had a response rate of about 64%, included some questions about general attitudes.  The vast majority of doctors completely agreed with the notion that confidential health information shouldn’t be disclosed to an unauthorized person (91.4%) and that patients should be fully informed about the benefits and risks of a procedure or treatment (88.7%). Support was slightly weaker (82.8%) for the idea that doctors should never tell a patient something that isn’t true. And a significant chunk of doctors — 34.1% and 35.4% respectively — said they only somewhat agreed or disagreed with the notions that they should disclose all significant medical errors to affected patients and that they must tell patients about relationships with drug and device companies. What about actual practice? Well, 55.2% of respondents said they’d described a patient’s prognosis in a more positive way than was warranted at least once in the past

year. More than 28% said they’d revealed confidential medical info to an unauthorized person (intentionally or not), and nearly 20% reported not fully disclosing an error to a patient out of fear of being sued. Finally, 11% admitted to outright telling an adult patient or child’s guardian “something that was not true.” Lisa Iezzoni , an author of the study and director of the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital, says there many different reasons for, say, describing a prognosis too optimistically. Some of them may even be “defensible and reasonable,” she says. (The study didn’t get into the reasons behind the responses.) But “at the end of the day, patients need accurate information about their health” in order to make the best decisions about their care, she says. The survey found that surgeons and cardiologists were more likely to provide complete and open communication with their patients than were other specialties, she says — perhaps because they are already well-accustomed to getting informed consent from patients for operations and procedures. Read more: What Doctors Think About Assisted Suicide, Romance With Patients and Organ Selling Survey: 36% of Docs Don’t Believe in Reporting Impaired Colleagues Image: iStockphoto

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Are Doctors Always Honest With Patients?