Introduction/Overview

  Staying current in one's field and delivering good patient care is challenging enough without adding the fear and risk of malpractice.

  Clinicians focus on errors as the source of malpractice risk, and errors certianly do occur in medicine, sometimes with disastrous consequences for the patient. Yet malpractice is much more a function of bad relationships between patients and clinicians, and much less about bad outcomes. The ways in which clinicians approach (or don't approach) bad outcomes in a clinical situation play a critical role in the likelihood of litigation. (In fact, the typical ways that errors are handled in real life actually increase the risk of litigation.)

  Conscientiously applying a few basic communication principles can have far-reaching and dramatic implications. You can not only reduce your risk of malpractice, you can also improve clinical outcomes, increase patient satisfaction, and improve patients' adherence to treatment regimens -- and do it all in less time and with greater ease than you're doing now.

  You can not only reduce your risk of malpractice, but you can reduce the