We

I was asked to speak in a hospital forum about nonpunitive response to medical incidents. An apt illustration of the current climate comes from those stories in which honest doctors who make full confession find themselves viewed unfavourably. Should we then keep our mouths shut?

Hardly. There comes a time in the career of most doctors when things go badly awry. It comes earlier for those who work the hardest. No matter when it comes, however, the struggle is best overcome with support from the others. That's why I shared in the forum my way of handling my downright crestfallen colleague after a medical blunder. My usual response is a conscious effort to make use of the term we instead of the insulating pronoun you. "Did we forget to remove the tourniquet after blood taking?" is much preferred to "Did you leave the tourniquet on the patient’s arm?"

Wait. The human psychology of association behaviour is usually the other way round. Instead of linking ourselves to negative stigma, we tend to keep ourselves separate from the failure by the pronoun they. This is best shown by Robert Cialdini who did an experiment in which students at Arizona State University were phoned and asked to describe the outcome of a football game their school team had played a few weeks earlier. Some students were asked the result of a certain game their team had lost; the other students were asked the result of a different game that their school team had won.

How did the students describe the school team victory? "We beat Houston 17 to 14," or "We won."

How about the lost game? "They lost to Missouri, 30 to 20," or "I don't know the score, but Arizona State got beat." And, do you know what the most remarkable answer was like?

"They threw away our chance for a national championship!"