Responding to Adverse Outcomes – What Every Physician Should Know

August 6, 2024

Physicians have an ethical obligation to be honest and forthright in communicating with patients. To maintain the trust in the physician-patient relationship and to help patients make informed treatment decisions, unanticipated outcomes – whether or not they resulted from a medical error – should be disclosed to the patient.

Unanticipated outcomes are those negative or unexpected results stemming from a diagnostic test, medical judgment or treatment, or surgical intervention – or from the failure to perform a test, treatment or intervention.

The unanticipated outcome may or may not be the result of error or negligence. Disclosure, like informed consent, is a process, not a single event or single discussion.

ISMIE provides guidance in the resource Disclosing Unanticipated Outcomes, which includes guiding principles, how to discuss an adverse outcome with a patient, and a checklist of what to do in the event of an unanticipated outcome. 

If you have any questions, please contact the Risk Management Division by email.