Half of all doctors are below average

BMJ 1998;316:1734-1736 ( 6 June )

Education and debate

Half of all doctors are below average

See Editor;s choice

Jan Poloniecki, lecturer.

Public Health Sciences, St George's Hospital Medical School, London SW17 0RE

j.poloniecki@sghms.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A heart operation can put a very ill patient on the road to a long and healthy life, or it can kill the patient. Major surgeryis just one of many instances when treatment can result in a failuremore serious than the consequences of doing nothing. The balanceof risk requires a responsible attitude from all the many partiesto an operation: the patient, the general practitioner, the specialist physician, the surgeon, theatre nurses, and the anaesthetist; supervisors, such as the chief medical officer and chief executive of the hospital; and the funders of the operation.

This article considers the advantages of having an authoritative estimate of the current failure rate for an operation andreflects on the problems that have arisen where there was a lackof interest in doing this.

Table Removed (Available Only in the Full Text)

	What are my chances, Doc-as a percentage, please?

A numerical estimate of the failure rate is a number, not a statement like "The operation is . . . [Full text of this article]

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