Doctors who seem hurried and uninterested are at risk of being sued even if they practise good quality medicine, said researchers in the US last week. A team led by researchers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, examined the malpractice records of obstetricians in Florida during 1987 and found that those who had higher levels of satisfaction among their patients also had lower rates of malpractice claims filed against them.

The study, published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association (1994;272:1583-7), was done …