ArticleCureus2020
Internal Medicine Residents and the Practice of Defensive Medicine: A Pilot Study Across Three Internal Medicine Residency Programs.
Article in Cureus, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Perioperative practice variations between university and private hospitals in total knee arthroplasty: a retrospective comparative study.Acta orthopaedica et traumatologica turcica · 2026Article
- Patient influencing doctor-patient dispute trials: evidence from China.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- From challenge to growth: Exploring physician narratives of patient complaints during residency.Medical education · 2025Review
- The occurrence, types, reasons, and mitigation strategies of defensive medicine among physicians: a scoping review.BMC health services research · 2022Article
- Medical errors, medical negligence and defensive medicine: A narrative review.Clinics (Sao Paulo, Brazil) · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background Defensive medicine is becoming increasingly prevalent in the United States and is estimated to cost billions of dollars in excess healthcare spending. There is evidence that the practice of defensive medicine starts early in the medical career. Defensive medicine has been investigated among residents in high medico-legal risk specialties, but there is a paucity of information on its prevalence among internal medicine residents. Objective To examine the prevalence and patterns of defensive medical practices among internal medicine residents. Methods We conducted an online survey among the residents of three internal medicine residency programs in the 2018-2019 academic cycle. We invited all internal medicine residents within the selected programs to participate through email and asked them to complete an electronic survey assessing defensive medical practices. Results A total of 49 out of 143 residents participated in the study (response rate: 34.3%); 55% (n = 27) of the residents who participated considered the risk of being sued during residency to be low, compared to 40.8% (n = 20) who considered it to be moderate and 4.1% (n = 2) who considered it to be high. Defensive medical practices were found to be widely prevalent (40.0-91.3%) among internal medicine residents across all three clinical training stages. Assurance defensive practices were more common than avoidance practices. Conclusion Defensive medical practices, especially of the assurance type, were widely prevalent among our sample of internal medicine residents.
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