A 10-year retrospective descriptive study of internists’ complaints referred to Fars Legal Medicine Center

Abstract . The high rate of medical errors, malpractice payments, legal issues, and complaints from physicians leads to waste of the physician’s time and energy as well as high costs for related individuals and organizations. Patients and methods We analyzed the outcomes of 275 medical malpractice cases reported in the Department of Forensic Medicine in Fars Province from January 2006 to December 2016. The study population included all the internists as defendants and the patients who had filed a complaint against them. Results Based on the plaintiffs’ gender in the investigated cases, the maximum age of patients with complaints by gender among males ranged between 30–39 and 50–59 years (22.4%) and among females it was 30–39 years (22.8%). The degrees of physicians who had been accused of medical commission were recognized as follows: 5 (1.8%) medical students, 36 (13.1%) GPs (general practitioners), 126 (45.8%) internists, 6 (2.2%) pulmonologists, 6 (2.2%) nephrologists, 4 (1.5%) hematologists, 2 (0.7%) rheumatologists, and 38 (13.9%) gastroenterologists. Conclusions Annual malpractice from the beginning of 2006 to the end of 2016 varied from 0 to 5%, while the rate of annual complaints in the same period varied from 0 to 45%. Maximum malpractice payment belonged to gynecology which is about 50,358,000 Rials equivalent to US$11,990 involving malpractice and complaint concurrent with internists. Specially fields of general surgery(9.4%), gynecology (9.1%), subspecialty fields of thoracic cardiovascular surgery (6.9%), and family general practice (13.1%) were the fields of most complaints parallel with those of internists.