Patient reactions to staff apology after adverse event and changes of their views in four year interval

In the present paper we report results of a patient survey about safety related issues carried out in 2007 in Japan focusing on patient attitudes to receiving different kinds of apology from healthcare staff after a medical accident. Results show, first, that the strongest preference of patients is for a "full" apology including a hospital promise of taking preventive actions against similar events in the future; and second, that the least effective reaction by healthcare staff is a so-called "partial" apology in which staff express sympathy or regret about the event, and which is in fact perceived as worse than "no apology", i.e., merely informing the patient about the event and future health risk. Comparing results to a similar survey in 2003, it appears that since then Japanese patients' perceptions of healthcare professionals and organisations, though still not very trustful, have changed slightly to a more positive point of views. © 2010 Springer.