Assistant Professor of Medicine and lead author Daryl Thornton and his team examined 2068 electronic activity reports of patients in the ICU at Cleveland. Some 62 residents and 11 attending physicians had gloved hands in these documents in five months as they updated the files of 135 patients.
Thank you to the software typically used to detect plagiarism, researchers found that 82 percent of residents notes and 74 percent of physicians treating the notes contained material that was copied from previous records or other documents. And delinquency "material" was not only a sentence or two, at least 20 percent of the cases were inserted elsewhere.
While copying behavior can range from harmless to save time inserting outright misinformation, researchers readily admit that they are looking for the prevalence of copy and not delve into why doctors have done this or what effect, if any, this behavior has on patient care.And real now, if I may be so bold as to copy from the study itself, the researchers conclude, "further studies should focus on further elucidation of the factors that affect the copy in the intensive care unit and the effects of the copy on patient outcomes. '
For now, if you want to take your own doctor in the act, just ask your medical records and see if they are ongoing and appear to be on you. You should be able to see most of the notes, although in some states, like New York, the doctor may refuse access to his "personal notes and observations."...
