Brian Goldman: Doctors make mistakes. Can we talk about that?

http://www.ted.com Every doctor makes mistakes. But, says physician Brian Goldman, medicine's culture of denial (and shame) keeps doctors from ever talking about those mistakes, or using them to learn and improve. Telling stories from his own long practice, he calls on doctors to start talking about being wrong.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate

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[HRRyan2]

I really REALLY like this guy.

[MrClonazapam]

Excellent talk! Learning from mistakes is such a basic part of being human, it's almost frightening to think mistakes are buried to this extent because of shame.

[shouang]

/watch?v=nfLEc09tTjI

[AQGOAT24]

Great talk, he makes great points. We need to acknowledge the potential for error, and this will allow us for medicine to progress.

[earlyAMbirds]

@MissEldira everything is already in Scandinavia isn't it? Lol

[MissEldira]

This already exist in Sweden and Finland. The ability to report what was a mistake or could have lead to something without being punished. It is used in more then just the medic field. It helped reducing deaths and accidents in the Swedish air-force and so on.

-Instead of ending up in front of a military judge,

-instead of losing your job.

To learn and to teach

[WorldWideWonderWebs]

Such a fantastically brave speech. Dr. Goldman inspires me with confidence that one day we will have a medical system that truly works for the good of the patient, as opposed to the good of the lawyers. What i find really sad, even more so than the current state of affairs in the medical system, is that such a thought provoking and inspiring video only gets 40 odd thousand views, when a monkey drinking its own piss can score millions :-/

[mdquik]

From Paramedic to Physician. Happy he mentioned Paramedics as a part of his speech.

[KenRocker1968]

...

[BaronVonFartsicle]

His batting average is probably .999 - He is human. You can't expect him to be perfect every time.

[LeatherCladVegan]

One of the best and most desperately needed TED Talks of all time.

[Arghira]

this man deserves his second name...